


The Right Irreverent

by NuMo



Series: Curtains And Masks [1]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 18:31:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuMo/pseuds/NuMo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ll never let you carry me again”, she grumbles. </p><p>I give a mock salute. “Whatever you say, Captain Coffee Bean.” </p><p>She rolls her eyes. “Just Kathryn will do.”</p><hr/><p>Part One of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/18811">"Curtains and Masks"</a> Series.</p><p>This is my first work, and un-betaed, too. Any mistakes or goofs are completely my own, and I'm happy about each and every feedback, and of course I don't own them nor do I make any money out of this.</p><p>And yes, this is a very merry Mary Sue, but I think it's detached enough not to irritate. Again: Feedback is very very welcome!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

_Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice._

* * *

“There’s a storm brewing over there, Chakotay.” The planet has been a nice enough place for shore leave, balmy, unpopulated, and with lots of salvageable materials, both food-wise and for engineering. But apparently, ‘nice enough’ is over now, on _Voyager's_ crew’s third, and Janeway’s first, evening down. Inky clouds tower on the horizon, broiling upwards faster than anything Janeway has ever seen. The sky is losing its bronze dusk fast, surrendering to a blue that would look sunny on Earth but seems to mean something entirely different here. 

“I see it too, Captain”, her first officer’s voice is quiet, urgent, efficient. “We should get out of here, I think.”

“Agreed. Janeway to _Voyager_.” A sharp crackle startles her, then Ensign Kim responds, calmer now than during his first time in the big chair. He’ll make a hell of a captain one day, Kathryn thinks to herself. His report is far from reassuring, though, and he's already ordered Ensign Ashmore down with transporter enhancers, to beam-out coordinates he barely gets out before the line goes dead. Chakotay, his voice carrying farther than Janeway’s, starts repeating them, and over the sounds of fifty-seven crew members on the move, _Voyager’s_ captain keeps hearing sharp, loud, somewhat metallic noises that she can’t quite place until a bolt of lightning hits the ground not fifty meters to her left, and the resulting crack of thunder is a blow to her diaphragm rather than something that registers on her eardrums.

Alarmed shouts and more of that strange thunder spur her on until she’s running towards the beam-out point, headlong and flat out. Darkness falls, inky, palpable, but there is no rain, not yet, only the lightning and eerie thunder, and the darkness. Suddenly, the familiar white-blue of the pattern enhancers' tops appears in the direction in which she’s running, and Janeway is grateful to have the beam-out point outlined like that, for everyone's sake.

When the clouds finally open, it’s a downpour that swallows sound, air, warmth. And the triangle of lights. For a second, Janeway’s running steps falter, hesitate, disoriented. She hasn’t turned astray, has she? She doesn’t see anyone, but the rain is so thick by now that someone could be standing five meters away and not be seen. Another bolt of lightning hits a tree less than ten meters behind her and she speeds up again, determined to press on in what she wills to be the right direction. 

The storm seems malicious by now, disorienting her with its constant and rapid-fire alternation between complete darkness and dazzlingly brilliant lightning bolts. There is a strange lurch, and suddenly Janeway is- well, running still, but on wet... pavement? The abrupt transition makes her lose balance and slip, and pain blooms in her ankle and hip and shoulder, and then there’s a loud blaring noise, in front and around and behind her, and two bright lights drilling into her vision. Then, a wall of wetness, and lights that are red now, and receding.


	2. January 24th

Rain is pouring down in sheets, and thunder and lightning chase each other around the inky clouds. A car’s horn blares somewhere, drawn-out and urgent, while I hasten through the darkness, intent on reaching the bus stop cabin before I drown. There doesn’t seem to be air in the air, only water, coming from all directions. I’ve never been outside in such a storm; it is as intimidating as it is invigorating, somehow. Storms usually fascinate me, but _this_...

When I finally reach the cabin, I shake my head a little to get the rain off my hood and remove it awkwardly, my motions made clumsy by the sodden heaviness of my coat. I take off my glasses next, and dig a tissue out of my pocket to rub them dry. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see movement. I quickly put my glasses back on and turn to see, in the harsh neon light, another woman huddled on the bench. Her eyes are a little wild, and I can totally relate; as I said, the storm is reaching fantastic proportions, and this isn’t much of a shelter. When I apologize for not noticing her, she narrows her eyes somewhat, and I frown until I realize she probably just didn’t understand my words. When I try English next, she relaxes a little, so I repeat my apologies in that language, silently glad for my grasp of it, and stretch out a hand.

“Marie”, I introduce myself.

She opens her mouth but a sharp crack of thunder drowns her first try. Then, “Kathryn”, she repeats, shaking my hand over crossed legs hunched to her chest, in a grip that’s as firm as it is icy. I take a closer look. 

“You’re drenched!” I can’t contain the exclamation. Her hair is plastered to her skull; her clothes are completely soaked, and not nearly warm enough for a German January, even though the quicksilver hasn’t dropped to below freezing yet. She flicks her eyes dismissively, but she can’t suppress a shiver. It makes her wince involuntarily, though, and, looking still more closely, I realize something else.

“You’re hurt.” Her gesture is even more deprecating, if that’s at all possible.

“I slipped on my way here”, she says, trying for a light tone of voice, but at that moment, a drawn-out, gargantuan roll of thunder drowns every sound, and she flinches, and winces again. “Probably nothing but a pulled muscle or two.”

“Right”, I reply dryly. 

“Nothing that can’t be cured by getting warm again when this stops, anyway”, she murmurs.

“You’re not trying to sit this out in here, are you?”

“Well, this is a public transport stop, isn’t it? So I’ll take the next one that comes or wait until this blows itself out, whatever comes first.”

I cast her a glance that conveys my doubt. “It’s after midnight, there won’t be any buses until-” I peer at the case, but it’s smashed and empty, so I take out my smartphone to look up the timetable online, “...five sixteen. And I doubt that this will blow over any time soon.” Another duet of lighting and thunder emphasizes my words. “Where did you want to go, anyway? Can’t you walk there? At least the movement will warm you.”

“Well, frankly, I don’t think my ankle is up to walking anywhere. And I... I’m lost, I think.” She looks up at me with a look that’s nothing like her words would suggest. Someone else might have said this with a helpless flutter or an apologetic smile, but her mouth is set, and her eyes hold only a... challenge. As if trying to see what I would make of her statement. 

“Well now.” I tick the items off on my fingers. “Wet, hurt, lost, cold. I guess I can’t do anything about the first three, at least not out of hand, but I can help your freezing, at least.” I shrug off my coat and detach its liner jacket, passing it over. She opens her mouth as if to protest, but I set my chin and give her a Look of my own, with bells and whistles, and a roll of thunder as reinforcement. We stare at each other for a heartbeat, then a corner of her mouth twitches and she accepts the garment with a wry half-smile and a murmured thanks, burrowing into the warmth left in it by my body while I slip into the coat again. 

I’ll still be dry, I tell myself, even though I instantly notice how much the lining has insulated against the chill. The liner jacket won’t keep the rain off her, but she’s soaked anyway, and it _will_ help with the cold. A good compromise, I nod to myself, and sit down on the other end of the bench, leaning my head back against the sheet of glass and kicking out my legs. The feel of my wet jeans against them is despicable, and I long to get home and get rid of every last wet thing I’m wearing, but it seems my evening of helping others is not over yet. This morning, Ellie, my best friend, has told me that she and her boyfriend are breaking up, so after finishing work I’ve been with her, offering my shoulder, chocolate and tissues. Her mood fit the weather, and I doubt she’ll find sleep tonight, but she’s sent me home, her need for solitude outweighing company's promise of solace. And now here I am. A lightning bolt hits a tall building down the street, and the following crack of thunder is unbelievable. I can’t tell whether it’s that or the woman’s – Kathryn’s – flinching that rattles the bench we’re sitting on. Definitely not at ease with storms, this one. So take her mind off things, my thoughts instruct me.

“Do you need anything?” I ask her, turning my head to look at her. Her mouth is a sharp, flat line and for a second I can see apprehension in her eyes. Then a curtain drops and they become emotionless. When the curtain comes up again, she tries for a smile to go with it, but her face clings to its frown quite stubbornly. She settles for simply exhaling deeply, in the end.

“I’d kill for a cup of coffee”, she says, of all things, and I can’t help but whoop a laugh.

“Well, if that’s all...” I wiggle my eyebrows at her. “You don’t need to kill for that, you know. Just brave that storm for about five hundred meters and you shall have coffee, how about it?”

She looks at me as if I’m an apparition of a saint or something. Her face really is unique. Not pretty, by the usual standards, but with a clear beauty, and the more I see of it, the longer I want to spend watching it. It’s expressive, even though her mimics are minimal. So far, the corners of her eyes and mouth have, with minute movements, managed to convey confusion, fear, defiance, dismissal; and yet there are lines around her mouth and eyes that speak of laughter, and decisiveness, and that she knows both well enough to have their impressions traced into her features. Not many lines; still I’d wager she’s older than I am, even if not by far. Like Ellie, probably, around forty, I’d say. 

Now there’s longing in her eyes, so naked I can’t decide whether to laugh it away or swallow dryly. Hey – this was coffee we were talking about, right? 

“Well, is that a yes or a no?” I quip, and get up again, loathing and swearing at my wet trouser legs. When she hesitantly unfolds her legs, she can’t help but wince again, and I reach out my hand to help her up. She sets her teeth but takes it, and I realize she’s staying off her left foot as much as she can. I step around her to that side and drape her left arm over my shoulder. She’s a good bit smaller than me, so I quickly drop the notion of catching her weight with my shoulder, and support her with my arm instead. 

Again she looks set to protest, but after a moment’s thought, her left hand grips my shoulder with surprising strength and she nods her readiness. I whip up my hood and we set out into the storm.

Reaching the fast food joint I’ve been thinking about is hard work. Her left ankle is good for nothing, it seems, and she’s hopping after ten metres, and gasping after fifty. We stop under the awning of a filling station to get our breaths back, and, in my case, to dry my glasses again. The rain still seems intent on drowning every living thing stupid enough to venture outside. She’s breathing hard; her eyes are stubborn, flint grey in the harsh light, but the lines around them speak of pain, and the set of her mouth seconds them.

“This is no use”, I tell her softly. She shoots me a glare, but I’ve been expecting that and meet her eyes equanimously. 

“You’ll probably tell me you’ll carry me, next.” Her words are pressed, clipped, grated. It seems her eyes aren’t the only expressive feature about her. 

“Piggy-back would be best, I think.” I try to keep my voice as calm as I can, just to catch her off guard. “It’s just not logical for you to hop like that. It won’t help your ankle, and carrying you will get us there sooner. We’re halfway there as it is.” And I’ve half-carried her the last meters anyway, but she seems happy to ignore that, and I fight to keep from smiling.

Her shoulders slump suddenly, and I know I’ve won this argument, if that’s what it has been. I look around and spot a boulder at the corner of the driveway, and we make our way over there for her to climb up. I’m self-conscious, suddenly, and pinkness in her ears suggests she is, too, although that might be a reflection of the filling station’s garish lighting. I grin the feeling away before I turn to present her my back, and at least she doesn’t hesitate, even if pain makes her movements clumsy. I find I can easily bear her weight, but she tries balancing with her hands on my shoulders, at first, and it takes her weight too much to the back. 

“Could you lean forwards, please?” I ask her over my shoulder. “I know my coat is wet, but it’s difficult to carry you like that.” She complies, which means she’s basically hugging me from behind, but the proximity does add a little warmth, and that’s not to be sneezed at. I shake my head at the feeble pun of this as we pass a roundabout, and find new spring in my steps when the familiar gold-and-brown lights come into view. 

“Not far now”, I reassure her, and point out the joint with my chin for good measure. When we get to the door, I carefully turn my right shoulder forward to open it, and she disentangles one arm to help. With some awkwardness and squeals of wet coats on glass, we’re through, and I turn so she can slide off my back to a table. She slumps straight from there onto a bench, and closes her eyes wearily while I polish my glasses once more.

“You sure you don’t need a doctor or anything?” I ask her. Eyes still shut, she waves a hand vaguely. 

“Just get them to bring me coffee and I’ll be fine.” 

‘Get them to.’ I’m torn between a baffled frown and an incredulous smile at her choice of words, but walk over to the counter in silence, absently drying my glasses again – I offered, didn’t I? The smell of fries makes my stomach growl, but the place is empty except for the employees, and if I like their fries at all, it’s when they’re fresh. The ones I can see from where I stand don’t look appetizing, so I stick with coffee, pay, and walk back to our table. 

Kathryn hasn’t moved a muscle, but opens her eyes when I put the paper cup in front of her. 

“Milk or sugar?” I offer, but she shoots me a look of such utter contempt that I grin and drop to the chair opposite her. She gingerly touches the cup to determine where to grasp it, and I marvel at her discipline. For all the longing in her eyes, she still takes the time to ensure she won’t burn her lips or fingers. My grin softens into a whimsical little smile as I lean back to watch her. The cup seems to hypnotize her, and for a minute, she is in a world of her own, containing nothing but her and slow draughts of coffee. 

“This feels like a peep show”, I mumble after she’s halfway through the cup. Her head snaps up, as does her eyebrow, and I swallow the mewling that starts in my throat. So I’m into women. Into women who can raise one eyebrow, especially. Who cares if her hair is slick to her head still, or her eyes lined with fatigue? She’s stubborn, and strong-willed, and lost and soaked and striking, and I have to stop thinking about this because quite probably she’s straight, too. 

“I almost forgot you were there for a while.” She sounds astonished. The coffee seems to have given her something back, indeed; her back is straighter, as are her shoulders, and her hands and gaze are steady as rocks now that she looks at me over a cup.

“I’ve never seen a cup of coffee make such a difference.” Somewhere, a sober part of my addled brain fires all the right commands. My voice is sincere and lightly teasing, my eyes and smile match it; all in all, I’m quite pleased with myself. 

Then she smiles. 

She’s transformed by it. I’m transported by it. Heavens help me, but I feel like a teenager, for all my thirty-two years, and I’m sure I’m blushing, and I can see where some of the lines come from, now, but who cares about them when _this_ is the reason? The wry twist to her smile, the matching sparkle in her eyes, the way she tilts her head slightly down after a moment, to look at the cup - every single motion is such a small, measured thing, but they come together in something bigger than the sum of their parts. Something completely captivating. 

I’m staring, and as soon as I realize, I shake myself out of it. I’m sure, though, that she’s noticed. That quirk to her mouth, is that a new thing? A reaction to my reaction? I can’t remember if it was on her face before. I try to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach, try to find my smile again, but even that part of my brain seems to have deserted me.

“Indeed”, she answers, and I wonder for a moment what she can possibly be meaning until memory returns, and other neural functions as well. I swallow and inhale deeply. 

“Well”, I say, opting for lightness, “what’s next? How do we get you back to where you belong?”

“I have no idea. If I knew how I’ve come to be here, that would be a start.” Her voice is dry, but her eyes hold something darker. 

“You don’t know how you came here?” This is intriguing, and I lean forward, chin on fists.

“I don’t even know where ‘here’ is”, and this comes out in one explosive bout of breath, but just as quickly, she’s caught herself again, her face all business.

“Uh, Cologne”, I answer. Nothing in her eyes changes. “Germany?” I try next. Ah. Still, I can’t believe this. “Where should you be, then?”

She fidgets, and the motion seems off, for some reason. Not the sort of body language I’d associate with how she’s behaved until now. “I never intended to come to Germany”, she says finally, and I my smile gains some more skepticism.

“Well, what happened? How did you end up in Cologne, at a bus stop, in a thunderstorm?”

“I really can’t say.” End of argument, her voice announces. My gaze falls to her neck. She’s opened my jacket, and I can see a grey turtleneck with four gold pins, equally spaced. They don’t look like an ornament, and I don’t think they’re a fashion label’s markings, either. At least, none that I recognize. 

She’s followed my eyes and sighs, suddenly. “They’re rank insignia”, she offers. She suddenly looks baffled, then tries to cover it with a lopsided smile. “I’m... ah...”

“Don’t tell me. You’re an agent on a mission. Not a secret agent, obviously, because you wouldn’t be wearing insignia if you were, but you’re under strict orders not to reveal mission details.” She does a double-take, and this, too, seems off. I intended my words as a joke, for heaven’s sake; it’s Carnival season, after all, and if you’d think strangely of people wearing strange clothes during Carnival in Cologne, even if it’s four weeks to go until Shrove Monday, well, you might as well stay home and stare at the wall until it’s Ash Wednesday. Yet somehow, she reacts as though I’m on target, or close, at least. I grin weakly. “And you kill for coffee. Hell, you probably get paid in coffee, I shouldn’t wonder. You know, I really think I’ve seen too many movies.”

“I...” she hesitates, then inhales sharply through her nose. “I lost contact with my... team, and I-”

”Your team?” And why does it seem to me that she wanted to call them something else?

“My team, yes. Colleagues. Friends. I’ve tried to contact them, without success.” 

My next words surprise me. “How can I help you?” Whatever I’m getting myself into, I don’t care. Whatever, whoever she is, I don’t want her to walk, not even limp, out on me. 

She seems astonished, too. Then her eyes cool again. “You can’t. You’ve done enough as it is.”

“Yes, and next thing you’ll tell me is that I know too much already and you need to shoot me, for the greater good, or world peace, or whatever. Come on, Captain Kathryn, that’s nonsense. You won’t walk anywhere on that ankle of yours, and you don’t know where you are nor where everyone else is. The most sensible thing to do is to pause and regroup, I should think.”

“I’m doing that!” she fires at me, voice low and calm but oh so forceful. 

“Fine!” I shoot right back. “And is it getting you anywhere?” 

After several deep breaths and severe gritting of teeth, she drops her gaze, a bitter twist to her mouth.

“Kathryn.” I wait until she looks at me again. “It’s late, and if you’re really lost... well. I live just around the corner. You can bunk with me tonight, and I’ll take you to a doctor tomorrow, and we’ll just... take it from there, alright?” And that offer is completely sincere, and completely innocent. Of course it is.

Her eyes narrow minutely. “Why?” It’s a demand, not a question. 

I tilt my head. “Why am I helping you?” She nods. “Well, one – you seem to need help, and two – I have the means to. And thirdly, this seems to be my night of emergency service.” She doesn’t look convinced. I sigh. “Kathryn, I’m a social worker. Helping is my profession. And I never could resist a damsel in distress.” I grin. I never could resist living dangerously, either, as this brings out the frostiest glare yet. 

“I’ll never let you carry me again”, she grumbles. 

I give a mock salute. “Whatever you say, Captain Coffee Bean.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Just Kathryn will do.”

* * *

Kathryn Janeway, very nearly seven years' worth captain of _Voyager_ now, accomplished scientist, diplomat by necessity and passable poker player, catches herself. She already let slip too much, in revealing the truth about her pips, and heavens knew what possessed her that moment. Thank goodness it’s worked out somewhat alright, but still, she has to tread carefully. On the other hand, this young woman, brash and cocky as she is, is the best bet Kathryn has come across yet, for warmth, and dryness, and well, yes, a bed, and time to think about what has happened. Regroup, indeed. Seeing a doctor doesn’t hold any appeal at all, at least not compared to the prospect of a bed, but this ankle of hers needs looking at, and treatment, too, probably. 

Kathryn has no idea why she’s here, nor, truly, where ‘here’ is. Or when. This does look very convincingly like Earth, but certainly not like the 24th century, and it probably isn’t even the same timeline. Good heavens, Germany. Wasn’t Germany affected in the Eugenic wars? And yet there is no evidence of a war, current or just past, as far as Kathryn can make out. Still, she might be in a time just before the outbreak, couldn’t she? 

At least she’s held on to the tricorder, even if its readings haven’t told her much. Things do seem a bit clearer now, after this coffee, bad though it has been. Maybe the storm, combined with whatever had caused Harry’s readings, has opened a rift in the time/space continuum. Maybe she’s slipped and hit her head, and this is all illusion, although why an illusion should include having bad coffee is beyond her. Things might be even clearer in the morning, at least she hopes so, just as she cannot but hope that her crew is alright. She has no idea why her gut tells her to trust Marie – she doesn’t even know her last name, but then, neither does the younger woman know hers, Kathryn’s, and still she’s invited her to her home. _Alright, trust your gut, then. But no more slips_ , Kathryn resolves.

* * *

Despite her protests, she still can’t put enough weight on her ankle to be able to walk, so again, I carry her on my back, the few hundred meters to my place. At least the thunderstorm seems to have moved off a little; lightning is still frequent, but the thunder isn’t instantaneous anymore, and the rain has let off a bit, too. I’m glad my apartment block has lifts; I don’t think I could have managed stairs with her on my back or on my arm. 

She slides off my back in the small hall of my apartment and leans against the wall for support. I bustle through to the bedroom and grab a set of pyjamas for her, then I usher her into the bathroom, with firm instructions to make use of everything she finds there to return to some level of comfort, and fluttering gestures of rejection at her protests. When the door closes behind her, I check my phone for messages from Ellie (none), change into – lovely, warm, dry – pyjamas myself, don my terrycloth robe for good measure. Then I hunt the medicine cupboard for the tube of analgesic salve which I remembered still having. 

I smile when I hear the shower – I’ll take one, too, I promise myself, later, and damn the neighbors. I try not to think of the fact that she must be naked, right now, in my tub, and busy myself slicing ginger for a quick cup of tea, pouring when she comes out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam. 

“Hamam!” I crow, smiling. This expression, the Turkish word for their famous steam-baths, has been a standing joke between my last girlfriend and me, to be used whenever excessive, and excessively hot, showering turned the bathroom into a steamy sauna. She raises both her eyebrows at me, but the quirk around her mouth tells me the hot shower has mellowed her disposition. I quickly explain the expression, and the quirk changes, to something that makes me blush.

“Girlfriend?” she asks, and my blush deepens.

“Uh, yes. I... I guess I should have told you before, right? Ah... I hope it’s...” I never realized it might be a problem, or even that it might come out like this. I curse my mouth, running away from my brain like this and landing me in trouble. Well, maybe. God, there goes her eyebrow again.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I don’t, anyway. My combat training included several ways to disable and/or kill an opponent while unarmed, you know. In case you’re going to try anything.” She’s standing on one bare foot in the doorway, drowning in my oversized nightclothes, wet hair in disarray around her face, and still, I believe every word she says. Nevertheless, I can’t let this go unchallenged, can I?

“Huh”, I scoff, folding my arms. “I’m a social worker. I can bring you to your knees, begging me to stop, just by talking.”

She laughs at that, just the one guffaw, but heartfelt, still. “I bet you can.” 

I change the subject, remembering the salve and gauze in my hands. “Here’s something for that ankle of yours. Tea, while you’re putting that on? Or another cup of coffee? Something to eat, perhaps?” She stifles a yawn, blinks at me apologetically, and shakes her head. 

“Thank you, but no. I’m fine. Thanks for this, too”, she indicates the bundle, retreating to the tub to apply them, and I quickly back out again, to give her privacy and to prepare the spare bed for myself, good-host mode. There’s some clashing of wills again when she realizes I intent for her to take my bed, but I can be just as stubborn as she seems to be, finally retreating to “my apartment, my decision”. I guess she’s too tired to argue very much, but still, victory is victory, I think to myself as I step into the shower myself.

* * *

Looking around the room, Kathryn takes everything in, the way she’s taken in and analyzed the rest of the apartment. Three floors up, one exit door, and her host has locked that (twice), but has left the key in the lock. To get to it, though, Kathryn would have to pass through the living room where Marie has put up the spare bed. She has no chance of reaching the door quickly, or even silently, on this ankle of hers, and inwardly, she curses her slip and fall once again.

This whole situation is irritating, with or without a sprained ankle. There are unmistakable signs that this is Earth, coffee, for one thing, and street signs and billboards with recognizable letters in an only slightly foreign language. And yet there are combustion engines, and tricorder readings of a level of ambient radiation that indicates atomic power plants but no atomic war, and a restaurant whose looks screamed international franchise but which was completely unknown to her. And her universal translator doesn’t work, for whatever reason. Marie’s English is surprisingly good, though, and her accent is really quite charming. Kathryn frowns at the impudent thought, and concentrates on her situation again.

If this is the past, she has to tread carefully. If this is an alternate timeline, she has to tread carefully. If this is another illusion concocted by hostile aliens, she has to thread carefully. If this is just her own head imagining things, well, it doesn’t hurt to tread carefully, either. 

And yet. Marie – family name of Vey, Kathryn remembers, according to the door plate, taller than herself by about twelve, maybe fifteen centimeters, probably younger, too, even though there’s a bit of grey shot through her shortish brown curls, compact and with strength that speaks of regular exercise – Marie has invited her to coffee, to her home, to her bathroom and now her bedroom, and hasn’t taken no for an answer one single time, apparently intent to help Kathryn despite any protest, or inconvenience, and without even the slightest indication of hesitancy or doubt. Nor has she asked any further questions – and now Kathryn’s standing in her host’s bedroom while Marie’s in the shower, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to take a stranger in like that. 

Now, Kathryn would be the first to admit she doesn’t cut a fearful figure right now, hopping on one foot around the bed to look into the nook behind it, but still, somehow, she isn’t sure whether Marie’s self-assurance rankles or soothes her nerves. The nook has a pull-down desk, with a shelf next to it and what looks like two portable computers and a printer, familiar, in a way, and yet not. Did they have internet here, then, wherever or whenever this is? Realizing she ought to remember but doesn’t, Kathryn frowns and shakes her head. Again, she regrets not having taken that class on turn-of-the-millennium technology, but who’d have thought she’d need it, and anyway, it’s too late for regrets now. At least the computers are another clue as to when, if not necessarily where. There’s a radiator in the nook, too, and she puts her uniform on it, in the hope that it will be dry in the morning.

She doesn’t feel too well when she turns around again; a headache has centered itself right behind her eyes as soon as she’s turned off the blessed hot water of the shower, and now she’s positively shivering, for some reason. The bed beckons with king-sized warmth and softness, and she succumbs to her tiredness, not even bothering to switch off the lights.


	3. January 25th

When my phone’s alarm goes off, my shoulders and back quickly register their complaints about yesterday’s gallantry. I groan and silence the beeping quickly, check for text messages Ellie might have sent during the night and groan again when I see the one she did send, and at 2:13 a.m., no less. She misses him, aches for him, can’t sleep at all. God. She’s in full withdrawal, and her message pulses with such pain and self-loathing that my heart bleeds for her. I try for compassionate, yet level-headed words as I type a reply, and I can’t help but send it straight away, hoping that she’s turned off her phone so its beep won’t wake her.

Kathryn is awake, I guess; there are sounds of movement coming from the bedroom, so I prepare breakfast with all my usual clatter to alert her to my being awake, too. She appears in the doorway only when the aroma of coffee weaves through the air, however, and I can’t swallow a whoop of laughter – she’s dressed in yesterday’s clothes again, and they just can’t be dry yet. And indeed, when she moves into my living room, the fabric shows patches of darker black in places, backing up my theory. Her outfit is very severe, all black but for a block of red at the top and some form of brooch on her chest. A zipper in the jacket’s front reveals the turtleneck I remember from yesterday, complete with pins. It does look like some sort of uniform, and for the first time I wonder what I’ve got myself into, really.

“And a good morning to you, too”, she answers my chortle sardonically, her back very straight, hands tensely at her sides.

“Sorry, Kathryn”, I apologize, “but why on Earth did you dress in wet clothes? That must feel awful.” I shudder exaggeratedly, trying not to spill anything from the two cups I’m carrying, one black coffee, one ginger tea. “You know”, I go on with a wink, “there’s a whole closet full of clothes in there – dry ones, even. You’re very welcome to them, even if they’re probably not going to fit.” 

She accepts the offered cup, but when she sips, her movements are incredibly stiff. “I wouldn’t presume-“, she starts, and I head that off at once.

“Of course, and I understand. I wouldn’t just have gone through a stranger’s wardrobe, either, I assure you. Why don’t we have a look together? You’re just going to catch a cold in this.” Turning to where she still stands, I give her my best mothering look and she snorts. “Come on, Kathryn, resistance is just a waste of time when I’m set on something.” Her eyes look a little wild, and too bright in a way I think I recognize, but at least she’s stepping aside to allow me into the bedroom. I notice the heat coming off her, but she seems to function quite well despite the apparent fever, and I decide to refrain from mentioning it. Secret agents know how to deal with fever, surely. I gamely try to keep from snorting at this thought.

As we try to find something of mine that she could wear, she loosens up a bit – and how could she not, seeing as we’re going through my wardrobe, dismissing most of what we find before choosing a pair of jeans I’ve outgrown in width, and a grey sweater. She still needs to use a belt to hold them up, and rolls up the trouser legs several times. Slender and lean, I’d judge her to be track and field, rather than my rowing muscle. No one could ever call me skinny, and I’ve gained even more since I started my current job with its crazy hours, but I don’t curve (much) where I shouldn’t, and do so where I should, as does she – more so than I, in places, I notice when she leaves for the bathroom in order to change. 

I drop to my – her – bed and whistle softly. Just the right way to spend a morning – have an extraordinary woman come out of my bedroom, provide her with coffee and clothes, leer at her breasts. I laugh at myself, then hunt for more clothing – I don’t want to go to work in pyjamas, after all. 

Her ankle seems worse than yesterday, though. She tries not to let it show, but she can’t even get her boot on. So, after breakfast, I call my office to tell them I’ll work from home today, and take her to see a doctor, paying cash to avoid the question of ID (which it turns out she hasn’t) – in my line of work you know exactly which doctor to go to, for something like this. She almost falls asleep on me in the waiting room while I check for and respond to more messages from a despondent Ellie, then she’s deliberately alert in the doctor’s office. Iced wraps on and off every half-hour, and stay off the foot for at least a week, his orders are, and, seeing her face as I translate his words, I know this is going to be a challenge for both of us. Despite her protests about the prescribed treatment, I don’t think she’ll be able to do much in the next few days, anyway. It’s sheer willpower, and probably the fever, too, that keeps her from spluttering when she sees the brace and crutches.

Her silence as we make our way back is stony. She’s adapting to the crutches quickly, but I think it’s more hard-headed determination than any form of familiarity with walking aids. At the supermarket on the corner, I stop and turn to her; yet she speaks before I have the chance to get a word out.

“Seems like I’m twice stuck”, she snaps, and my eyebrows shoot towards my hairline without any chance of me stopping them. Immediately, she relents – a little. “I’m sorry. I’m just… no good with…”

”Being stuck?” My whimsicality wins me a tight smile from her. “Think positive, Kathryn. I’ve got a computer and a phone at home. When we’re done grocery shopping, you’re welcome to try and see whether you can contact your people, or home base, or whatever. And hey – you’ve got your own private nurse, cook and entertainer to keep you company until they come to get you.” I sketch an ironic little bow. 

“I couldn’t-“, and now it’s my turn to interrupt her.

“Yes you can, and you will. What would be the alternative? Hotel and full room service, and have your bank account explode? What’s the worst thing that can happen, anyway? You won’t like my cooking?”

“I can’t draw you into this, Marie.”

“Into what? Hell, Kathryn, that secret agent story was a joke. So you lost the group you were travelling with, and need to get into contact with them – fine, let’s do that. Again, what’s the worst that can happen? Telephone fees for Greenland?” I turn and walk towards the entrance, forcing her to follow me. As good a tactic as any, to get her to comply.

Looking back over my shoulder at her, I see her inhale and open her mouth as if to say something. She snaps it shut again, considers, winces. “It’s bad enough you paid the doctor’s fee, Marie. You can’t go on…”

I stop again, turn to her again, and the look on my face stops her words, at least. My turn to breathe deeply, even though I had seen that one coming. “I can, and I’m fine with it. Paid the rent already, didn’t I? It’s alright, Kathryn. I wouldn’t have offered otherwise, you know.”

Again, I can see that she doesn’t like it, but as I said – what would be the alternative? Apparently, that’s what she decides, too. She nods, once, stiffly. “Alright.” And, almost as if in afterthought, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I try to convey my sincerity with my voice, since she won’t meet my eyes, her gaze fixed on the ground. I touch her shoulder and give her a smile when she finally looks at me. “Come on. I’ll even drive you in the cart, if you want to.” 

The look of mortified outrage on her face is beyond words. Her eyes flicker between the rows of wire shopping carts and my face. “You can’t be serious.” 

“I’m never anything but serious about shopping carts, Captain Kathryn.” Following her look, I regard the wire carts solemnly, then turn back to her, dismissing them with a derogatory flick of my hand. “I wasn’t thinking of these, anyway. Those seem much better suited to the purpose.” And I point, dead-pan, to three racing-car-shaped plastic carts the store has for susceptible children. She rolls her eyes, and matches my smile in spite of herself.

“You’re impossible.”

“At your service, Captain.” Her flinty look doesn’t stop my little bow. 

“Why do you insist on calling me ‘Captain’, anyway?” she asks when we start into the shop.

“Captain is such as dashing title, I’ve always thought.” Getting us a cart, I sigh, with just the right amount of mock wistfulness to make her snort. “I’ve always felt somehow that there is something… delightfully dangerous about a captain.” It’s not my line, exactly, but she doesn’t have to know that, does she?

Her eyebrow climbs her forehead again, and the quirk to her lips is completely charming. Her smiles usually fade quickly, but the quirk lingers, I’ve noticed, as does the sparkle in her eyes, even though there is, underneath all that, a lingering tension in her that has been peeking through every now and then, ever since I first saw her. I really, really need to stop thinking like this. For all I know, she’s not only straight, but she’ll probably be gone by the end of the week, or sooner. No time, and no reason, to start thinking about tension, and how to maybe alleviate it.

Shopping is a quick, efficient affair. I like how Kathryn answers decisively when I ask her whether she likes this or that or the other thing. I’m not very patient with people who seesaw endlessly, and she definitely doesn’t. She expresses a liking for strongly flavored food, but nothing too elaborate, so it is going to be pasta tonight. 

After checkout, I turn to a pharmacy to get cold packs and an antipyretic. I can tell that being handicapped with a sprained ankle clearly doesn’t sit easy with Kathryn, and there are other clues that she’s used to getting things her way, but every so often, she notices, swallows her impulse, and defers to me. I guess I’m not too far off with calling her ‘Captain’; whatever her job is, it’s clear that she’s used to being in charge of things. Alright. So I’m watching her. But it’s my job to watch people, isn’t it, to make sense of what they’re saying, and of what they don’t say. And I can see she’s in pain, and apparently the fever’s running higher again, as well. 

It’s also clear that she doesn’t want to be beholden to me in any way. Her face gets stony whenever I take out my purse. The fact that I have to carry all our groceries (and the bags are bulging; I’m counting on spending the next days at home, so I’m re-stocking accordingly) doesn’t help matters, either. I ignore her teeth-gnashing; I can ignore quite a lot of things when I set my mind to it. If this goes on, I might address it one way or the other, but for now, I walk and chat without the slightest regard to her stormy eyes. 

They’re lovely, by the way, somewhere between grey and blue, sometimes lighter, sometimes darker, depending on the light; not boring solid brown as my own. Her hair, too, changes color with the light, seeming light brown mostly, but with auburn highlights at times that I could never aspire to. All I have, truth be told, is boring brown, again, shot with grey since I turned twenty-five, or roundabouts. At least it’s a bit wavy, curling upwards at the points when it’s this length. I also like how the wind plays with her bob, teasing strands out of its severity. My hands itch to tuck them behind her ears for her, seeing as she can’t do it herself, what with crutches and all. And I’m drifting, I suddenly realize, glad that she doesn’t seem to be into small talk, at least not right now.

When we get home, I power up my working laptop while I put away the groceries and offer to make tea. When Kathryn doesn’t ask for coffee instead, I’m bemused, but when I return from the kitchen to discover her nodding off on my sofa, that turns to alarm. It takes another contest of wills to get her to bed, but my stubbornness and her fever collaborate splendidly. 

I take my laptop to the living room table to give her privacy and quiet, and an emailed doctor’s report on one of my clients yammers for my attention, as does another message from Ellie, unusually chipper, and in this more worrying than the heart-broken ones she’s sent before. I set the laptop’s alarm to alert me every half-hour, to remind Kathryn to put on, or away, the cold pack as per doctor’s orders. One of them is ready to go on – I was impressed when the pharmacist not only recommended a set of three packs to ensure that at least one of them would always have been in the freezer long enough to have the right temperature, but also offered me one pre-frozen one for immediate use plus two for the fridge for later. I’ve never had a sprained ankle to treat, but I saw the sense of that immediately.

When that first alarm goes off, and my knocking isn’t answered, I slowly open the bedroom door. Now, I wouldn’t normally intrude on someone’s privacy like that, but this is not a normal situation, I guess. And indeed, Captain Kathryn is out like a light, so completely gone that she sleeps through my ministrations to her ankle, and even through my taking her temperature on her forehead. It’s turning out at 39.3 degrees, and I frown and call the doctor we saw earlier.

“She’s in bed and asleep?” he asks after I tell him about my worries. I affirm this, and he goes on, “well, at least she won’t give you any more trouble then. Just kidding, Frau Vey, just kidding. Spirited as all red-heads, that girl, isn’t she? It might be just a cold, or a case of the flu, we’ll see in due time. Go on with the cold pack routine, and take her temperature every time you do, and if it rises to above forty, or if she seems to have trouble breathing, call again. If she remains the same, try to rouse her enough to be able to take antipyretics, and see to it she drinks enough while she does. If the fever goes on for more than two days, call again, too. Oh, and no huddling, and strict personal hygiene, so you don’t contract whatever she has, but you don’t need me to tell you that, do you?”

“No, Doctor Ensheimer. Thanks a lot, and sorry for bothering you.”

“Don’t mention it, girl. You have my mobile number – if anything goes amiss, just call me, alright?” And that’s exactly why I like him: he’s pragmatic and doesn’t like to crack nuts with a sledgehammer, but he’s solicitous all the same, and very approachable. I’ll even tolerate the ‘girl’, with him. I don’t know if Kathryn would react graciously to being called a spirited red-head, but she doesn’t know, does she.

“Alright, Doc. Thanks again.” 

“Take care, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit where it's due: In _Guards, Guards!_ , by Terry Pratchett, Lady Sybil Ramkins tells Captain Vimes: "Captain is such as dashing title, I've always thought. ... I mean, colonels and so on are always stuffy, majors are pompous, but one always feels somehow that there is something delightfully dangerous about a captain."


	4. January 28th

Opening her eyes, Kathryn feels completely baffled by the white ceiling above her, lit by sunshine. A turn of her head to take in her surroundings leads to several things happening all at once: pain explodes behind her forehead, she groans, the bedroom slowly becomes familiar, and a worried female face surrounded by shortish brown curls appears in her field of vision.

“Kathryn – no, stay down. Stay _down_ , already.” The words and the accompanying gesture of mild restraint convey an irritating familiarity both with Kathryn’s condition and with her stubbornness. After a fraction of a second, and a brief marvel at how the bed suddenly turns galloping circles, Kathryn concedes to the slight push and slumps to the bed once more. 

“What’s-“ she tries, but her throat is sore. The woman – Marie, Kathryn’s memory supplies suddenly – holds a glass to Kathryn’s lips, and cool, blessed water revives Kathryn’s brain enough to come up with more than just a first name. 

“I’ve been ill.” Kathryn had always thought she was accustomed to how gravelly her voice could sound, but the coarseness of that short sentence surprises even her. 

“So you have”, Marie replies solemnly. “A mild case of the flu, probably, or so the doctor said. Two days of fever until it broke yesterday, and sixteen hours of uninterrupted sleep, since. I imagine you might want the bathroom?”

Hearing the words brings out the very real need indeed, and also the very real secondary need for support to get there, when a wrong movement reminds Kathryn of her ankle. A look of dismay must have crossed her face, because a teasing smile quickly appears on Marie’s. 

“Don’t worry. I’ve carried you before, remember?”

Had she? Dimly, Kathryn remembers darkness, and rain, and the rhythmic up-and-down of being carried piggyback. No, that can’t be true, can it? Piggyback? Slowly she pushes herself into a sitting position and shifts her legs off the bed, wondering how to proceed and why she’s in a stranger’s pyjamas. Marie’s next move answers the first question quite eloquently, and supports Kathryn’s theory as to the second, when the younger woman deftly slips one arm around Kathryn’s shoulders and the other underneath her knees, and lifts her, all without showing the slightest hesitation about personal space. 

“Hold on to my neck, and we’ll have you in the bathroom in no time at all”, she instructs, voice light and matter-of-fact, as if she knew exactly how cheek-burningly embarrassing this feels to her patient, and indeed, after mere seconds, the bathroom door closes, leaving Marie outside.

“Oh, and don’t lock that door”, Kathryn dimly hears next, and judges by the angle and volume of the words that Marie is retreating to the living room. “I need to come rushing in if I hear you faint, you know. We knights in shining armor much prefer not to kick down doors if we can help it, especially if they’re our own.” Kathryn snorts, but softly, unsure of how much sound will travel through the door. Marie’s words border on the insufferable, but her tone of voice mellows them, self-mockery and good humor overlaying their brashness. Washing her hands, she hears Marie's voice again, raised to bridge the distance and the sound of running water, “You might also want to whistle, or something, to let me know you’re still conscious, you know.” And that is so reminiscent of Starfleet protocol that Kathryn doesn’t even begin to dispute it. 

“wa’, cha’, wej…” Kathryn begins loudly, then stops and frowns. She had indeed intended to count out loud, but certainly not in Klingon. She has no time to worry about this glitch, though, because there’s a tap at the door.

“You alright, Kathryn? You sounded a bit… odd, for a moment.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Not to mention nodding off while washing her hands, Kathryn realizes, and quickly turns off the tap. Taking a towel from the stack under the sink and straightening up again brings another wave of dizziness, too, and Kathryn braces herself against the door with a quiet oomph. She frowns when she hears Marie’s voice again, unaccountably close, until she remembers that Marie must still be standing on the other side of the door.

“Kathryn?”

“I… wait a moment”, and she steps away from the door to allow entry. “Come in.”

Marie’s brown eyes are soft and solicitous when they meet Kathryn’s, but their mischievous sparkle is back quickly, and she pokes relentless fun at Kathryn’s various predicaments as they make their way back to the bedroom. She helps Kathryn into a sitting position and seats herself at the foot of the bed. Kathryn can hear the sound of the kettle heating up, and the possibility of coffee distracts her until she realizes that Marie is telling her about the last three days.

“…and I hope like hell that I won’t catch it. At least your ankle looks better”, and, yes, the pyjama pants she’s currently wearing are short enough to show it, and a bit of stubble too, and Kathryn groans and shuts her eyes and tries to slid her legs under the covers, hissing at how this wakes fresh pain in her ankle. “Oh for heaven’s sake, Kathryn, don’t be ridiculous”, Marie says, eyes rolled to the ceiling, “I’ve had to change outfits on you twice because they were soaked with sweat, and even if I’ve done that with my eyes tightly shut, I certainly won’t frown at you for _this_.” And the last word is accompanied by a very pointed look and a lopsided smile. 

Still, Kathryn feels mortified, as the implications of Marie’s words filter into her still-sluggish brain, and some of it must have reflected on her face, because Marie’s eyes soften again, behind their black-rimmed glasses. 

“Listen. Kathryn. You’ve been ill, so I took care of you. We’re both grown-up women, without any reason to be ashamed of anything.” The right corner of her mouth quirks, and she continues, “Besides, I’m a social worker, and this qualifies as client’s confidentiality, in my book.” Then her smile widens and her eyes grow positively wicked. “Along with every word that you’ve uttered in your fever dreams.”

Groaning, Kathryn drops her head into her hands and stares at the sheets, willing her sudden blush to disappear as quickly as it has come. Replaying what Marie has said only serves to deepen it, though, and the idea of what she might have rambled about, even in a fever, in what might be the past, or a different timeline, suddenly sits icily in Kathryn’s mind. “What have I…?”

“Revealed? Nothing I could make much sense of. I’m not too far off the mark with ‘Captain’, though, I think, because whoever Mister Paris and Harry are, you’re certainly used to ordering them around. And I guess that Seven isn’t just any number, but a member of your crew, too, right?”

“Good God”, Kathryn breathes, eyes still fixed on the sheets. The kettle sings out and saves her from saying any more, but she would bet a week’s replicator rations that she’s heard a chuckle from Marie underneath the kettle’s whistle as the younger woman rises and leaves for the kitchen. Screwing her eyes tightly shut, she tries to remember what her fever dreams might have been about, but all that her treacherous brain throws at her is the memory of soft, soothing words, and a cool hand steadying her head while she drinks. 

“Irritating, isn’t it, Kathy dear?” Her head snaps up and she ignores the returning dizziness to glare at the being in front of her, sitting at the foot of the bed where Marie has been only seconds ago, foot across one knee and hands folded around the other.

“Not as irritating as hearing your voice. Not as irritating as realizing I should have known this was one of your schemes. Why have you brought me here, Q?”

“Why, to thank you, of course!”

“You already thanked me with that PADD of yours. I don’t need more of your gratitude; I need you to take me back to my ship. My crew was in danger when you pulled me out of-“

“But they aren’t anymore. Kathy, if I know anything about you it’s how you dig your heels in whenever there’s so much as a hint of me ‘endangering’-” _I can’t believe he’s using finger quotes_ , Kathryn thinks, “your crew. No, they’re all safe and sound and outside time until you get back to them.”

“Which will be now, because you’re going to take me there right this minute.”

“Kathy, Kathy…” the way the omnipotent being tsks and shakes his head so sadly has lost nothing of its irksomeness, either. “This isn’t to thank you for helping me with Junior, although I must say it introduced me to levels of gratefulness I’ve yet to explore. No. In fact, Junior has helped me, and once I got past my irritation at the fact that he learned something I hadn’t expected him to, I saw that I could profit from his experience, too. I learned, Kathryn, isn’t that amazing? After billions of years of omnipotence, who’d have guessed there was anything left to learn? And from my son, too?” 

“Well, I hope you’ve learned to stop pestering me, and to respect my wishes. Return me to my ship. Now.”

“Patience, Kathy, patience. You see, I never realized how wonderful learning could be. It made me see that I had flaws, would you believe it?” Q pointedly ignores Kathryn’s deprecating glance and goes on, “I overcame them, of course. But what a revelation! And just imagine how it has improved me! I’m here to give you the same opportunity, you see?”

“Self-improvement? Thank you, Q, but I’ll do that on my own conditions.”

“Come on, Kathy, just go with the flow! Your gewgaws won’t help you here, and neither will those of this delightfully inventive person who took you home. Captain Coffee Bean, indeed. I have to remember that”, Q smiles sweetly, and Kathryn tries to strangle him with her eyes alone. “So stop eyeing these feeble bits of _technology_ ”, his voice drips with sarcasm on that word, “so covetously and start using the help that’s really available. Take that least-used ability of yours out for an airing, for once, and everything will be just dandy. Trust me.”

“As if-“ she starts, but he pulls up his hands and spreads them wide in his usual gesture of hurt innocence.

“Ah, ah, ah, there you go again, Kathy dear, dismissing the possibility that I might mean what I say, to nothing but your own disadvantage.” His eyes lose focus for a moment and his face suddenly turns wary. When he looks back at her, he tries to cover his move with a wink. “You know, I really can’t stay to chat, but I suggest _you_ stay, and chat with that charming girl. Someone who names you Captain Coffee Bean is someone to look out for.” And with his usual flamboyance and flash, he’s gone. 

Kathryn frowns. What did he mean, that least-used ability of hers? And with his other words, too? Her technology would not work to bring her back, nor would the technology she’d find here, is that what he was saying? And what help should she use then? And what’s Marie’s role in all of this? Why has he mentioned her? Is she part of his plan, in on his plan? No, she wouldn’t be, would she? Somehow, Kathryn can’t reconcile what she knows of her hostess with the idea that she would collaborate with a Q, knowingly, at least. Without her knowledge, just a pawn in one of his gambits – who knows? Leaving that line of thought as something she can’t resolve right now, Kathryn decides to stick to her plan of trying to use her combadge and tricorder, choosing to ignore Q’s words about them being no help. She has a few ideas, and she _has_ to at least try and see.

Her thoughts are starting to turn uselessly when a hand touches her shoulder, startling her. “Trouble staying awake? You’re too used to sleeping, I think. This might help.” And, praise the Coffee Gods, there’s indeed a cup of scalding, black ambrosia in Marie’s hand, and no indication that Marie has an inkling of the omnipotent being that has just vanished from her bedroom. Kathryn raises an eyebrow, and Marie’s smitten stare and subsequent blush brings back another memory, of far worse coffee (for all that she doesn’t drink the stuff, Marie makes a damn good cup of it), and the same moonstruck expression across the table. 

“Coffee?” Kathryn's disbelieving tone offers explanation for her eyebrow, after she’s made sure the cup is safely in her hand. It also gives Marie a base for regaining composure, apparently, as the younger woman pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose in a very transparent attempt to distract from the look in her eyes.

“You seemed to like it-”

“Don’t know what gave you that impression”, Kathryn murmurs quickly, cup already at her lips.

“-and you had enough other liquids during the last fifty hours or so. I lost count how many cups of tea and broth I made you drink”, Marie goes on with a smile. 

Her words make Kathryn halt in mid-sip and lower her cup. “Sorry.” 

“Whatever for?” 

“For putting you through this. It’s too much to ask, really, and I feel dreadful for not even asking.”

“Hey – social worker is nothing but a modern word for knight in shining armor. You realize that, don’t you.”

“You may have hinted at something like that, yes.” Kathryn realizes that she quite likes Marie’s way of putting things, and as they continue talking it certainly does take her mind off how guilty she feels, as Marie alternately offers information on Kathryn’s illness and good-natured teasing whenever Kathryn feels uncomfortable. She chooses to ignore the small voice that says Q _said_ to talk to her, though.

* * *

Kathryn is nodding off again. She works very hard at not showing it, but the fever has taken quite a lot out of her. Both the tiredness and her unwillingness to give in to it is something I’ve expected, though. I’ve worked from home these last three days to have time for both my self-imposed charges, and I guess I’ll have to cancel the half-day I’ve intended to spend at the office tomorrow, too. At least it gives me time to catch up with my paperwork. Ellie is trying the brave soldier routine, too, but both of them, even though their situations are nothing alike, are sure to realize their need for help sooner or later, and I want to be there for both of them when they do. It’s what I do, I guess.

When we talked just now, I noticed Kathryn frowning as if she didn’t remember some things, and she still drowses off every time we stop talking. I want to keep her awake, to return her to a normal rhythm, so I cast about for something to talk about when she suddenly snaps her eyes open again and offers a subject of her own. It surprises me – I’d never have thought that she would deliberately bring it up.

“So what do you think is my story?” she asks, her eyes intent, defying the tiredness at their corners.

“You mean after hearing you ramble?” She nods, and I lean back and exhale expansively. I’ve exchanged my perch at the foot of the bed for my far more comfortable desk chair, giving her more space in the process, and I can see how this helps her regain her composure. “Either I have seen too many science fiction movies, or you have”, I go on, drawing one knee up and hugging it. “I couldn’t make head or tails of it, but you sure sounded impressive. So I have several theories right now, each wilder than the other.”

“Let’s hear them.” Despite her light tone, her eyes hold on to that intensity, and I fight not to get lost in another spell of contemplating her. What was it she wanted to hear? Oh yes.

“Well”, I drawl extravagantly, counting on my fingers, “you’re an actress, and so deeply involved with your role that you quote your lines even in a fever dream. You’re a nerd, and fantasizing about being on a starship, which I could totally relate to. You’re here for the Carnival, already dressed up and kitted out, although I don’t like that theory, it’s too boring. Or you are indeed captain of a starship, and your words, outlandish though they seemed to my ears, are commonplace to you. Nonsense, all of it, probably, but it helped me pass the time.”

Again, her eyebrow comes up. “And which of these theories is your favorite at the moment?” 

“The actress theory, of course. Who wouldn’t like to have an actress in their bedroom, and carry her around and be a knight for her? So.” I look at her expectantly, and she tilts her head ever so slightly and returns my look with interest. 

“So, what?”

“Well, _are_ you?” I roll my eyes and laugh at the sheer absurdity of this conversation.

“An actress? Heavens, no. The only thing I can claim is that I can hold my ground when playing poker.”

“I bet.” There’s a pause as she regards the sheets again, turning her cup of coffee around and around in her hands. I let it stretch out; sometimes, silence asks the best questions. I’m dying with curiosity, but I think I’m pretty accurate about how much she hates giving things away. When she looks up at me with a measuring look in her eyes, I wonder what’s going to come next, truth or lie. Her words surprise me.

“I need your help”, she says simply.

I cock my head. “I say.”

“No, not with this. Well, not only with this”, she amends, following my glance over bed, cold pack, crutches and coffee cup. “I told you I’m lost, and that I need to contact my people, right?”

“So you did.”

“I have a… ah… a device for contacting them, but it doesn’t seem to work, and I would like to see whether I can repair it.”

“Alright.” I wonder which of her devices she’s referring to. I’ve looked at them sitting on the bedside table for almost three days now, and I’m afire with curiosity about them, too.

“If you have a small screwdriver, I could use that for a start. I’ll see if I need anything more complicated when I get the thing open.”

“Alright”, I repeat, grinning a little. I’d do the same thing – hell, I’ve opened very nearly every technological appliance in this household at one time or the other. I’ve almost always been able to close them again, what’s more, and hey, most of them even worked, or worked again, afterwards. “We could also look up the model and make of your phone on the internet, to see whether anyone encountered the same problems.”

“Uh… yes, maybe.” She sounds very dubious.

“You don’t know what kind of phone you have?” I hazard. I certainly don’t recognize any of her things, strangely enough.

“Well, it’s not a phone, strictly speaking.” 

I raise my eyebrows at that. If not a phone, well, then what? My sense of humor, always on the prowl, kicks in. “Let me guess”, I dead-pan, “it’s a very advanced technology that you’ve stol- oh, sorry, _retrieved_ for your customer, and it doesn’t work as he’s said it would, landing you here, and now you don’t know whether you’ve got the real thing or just a showcase dummy.”

“You really watch too many movies, Marie”, she snorts, but her eyes are guarded behind the ironic façade. Poker, right. Well, two can play that game. 

“I suppose you mean either the brooch or that folding thing, don’t you?” Her eyes turn wild instantly. Lost that hand already, Captain Kathryn. “I’ve picked up your clothes to take them to the washing machine”, I say by way of explanation, “and I took the folding thing out of your belt. The brooch just came off, same as the pins. I’ve been meaning to ask you how they attach again, too, but…“ I shrug. It hasn’t come up, and I hadn’t considered it very important. I’d made sure that there hadn’t been any closures, pins or back pieces in her clothing or on the floor, and then I’d forced myself to ignore them, until now. They’re still lined up neatly on the bedside table, and I indicate the row to her when she looks around, eyes still a little wild.

The way she relaxes at seeing them would hardly be visible if you weren’t looking for the details, but I am. Her right hand twitches minutely but very possessively, and some of the wariness around her eyes and mouth vanish, lines that had only appeared when I’d mentioned the jewelry just now – if that’s what it is. But if my gamble was correct, if they are some means of communication, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I do consider myself something of a geek. I sit back in my chair, cross my arms and kick out my legs, a picture of relaxed purposefulness.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

* * *

There’s nothing but curiosity in Marie’s posture. No threat, no suspicion, no reproach. And yet Kathryn can’t forget that Marie is a social worker (which in Kathryn's head translates to 'counselor'), and probably well versed in not showing any feelings, or judgment, and in wheedling things out of people. Try as she might, she can’t think of what to tell her hostess. All that echoes in her head is Q’s advice to ‘chat’ with Marie, for some reason, and the fact that Kathryn’s still in the shallower ends of illness doesn’t help. Still, she is surprised at what falls from her lips, suddenly.

“I do command a starship. And I seem to have been misplaced, somehow.” She pauses to look at Marie, expecting to see disbelief or at least skepticism, but encounters nothing but that reserved, professionally interested look she remembers from Starfleet counselors. And somehow, this seems fitting, because she certainly feels quite batty, telling Marie all this.

The pause stretches, then Kathryn goes on with one of the tamer theories she’s thought up, “I might be just hallucinating, even. I know I slipped in that thunderstorm. Maybe I’m dreaming all of this because of a head injury, you know.” This, at least, wins a lopsided smile from Marie, and that’s as a good a reaction as could have been hoped for, considering.

“Your ship’s the _Voyager_ , you said”, Marie says lightly, and yet Kathryn is quite sure the younger woman must see Kathryn’s pulse jump at the name. 

“Yes.” It comes out more strangled than dignified, and Kathryn curses her vocal chords.

“But _Voyager_ had no crew, nor a captain.” 

This baffles Kathryn for a heartbeat. Then she realizes. “You mean the probes from the 20th century.” Two raised eyebrows tell her yes. “No, my ship is not a probe. It’s about a hundred times bigger than that, and with a crew of well over a hundred people.”

“Including someone numbered, not named.”

“Seven. Yes.”

Marie nods. “Go on.” 

Again, Kathryn is forcefully reminded of former counseling sessions, and this sends up a warning flare, brilliant enough to break through this strange impulse to tell Marie these things. Is this Q’s doing, somehow? “You know, I don’t think I should.” 

“Oh, come on”, Marie says lightly, “you can tell me now and erase my memory later, when you’ve found your crew.” _Damn it, but she’s good_ , Kathryn thinks. Seeing Kathryn grow wary again, Marie has easily, and instantly, shifted to teasing, and she’s playing the ‘light and ironic’ routine very adeptly. Kathryn could almost admire how Marie’s smile slowly freezes into a nervous grin when Kathryn slowly nods and narrows her eyes speculatively. Kathryn has some routines of her own, after all. 

“I think we might just have to”, Kathryn says, “just to ensure you never call me Captain Coffee Bean again. That sort of thing sticks, you know.”

A quick grin flits across Marie’s face, leaves nothing but seriousness behind. “Kathryn, I can see that you don’t trust me.” Her face is intent for a moment, then she shrugs. “And I understand. I mean, if our roles were reversed, I’d be suspicious as hell, of everything around me. Even of someone who’s helped me, because how would you know my motives, right? Especially if that someone has introduced herself as a social worker, a profession that deals with insane or deluded people on a daily basis.” 

Insane or deluded? Hell, Kathryn hasn’t even thought of _that_ possibility, and goes cold twice over at realizing this, mortification that she hasn’t thought of being interpreted that way closely followed by concern that Marie might actually do just that. 

The younger woman goes on with only the slightest pause, but Kathryn is sure Marie has noticed her discomfort. “So, I’m not blaming you for that, nor that you’ve stopped telling me about these things. But I’ll have you know that I’m burning, _burning_ with curiosity. You haven’t had a chance to look at my book shelves, I guess, but at least eighty per cent of the books in there are science fiction or fantasy titles.”

With conscious effort, Kathryn refrains from rolling her eyes, but again, Marie obviously knows how to read the rest of Kathryn’s facial expression. “I know, I know. _And_ I _have_ seen too many movies. But this has the advantage that there is no end to the things that I consider normal, you know. I mean, the many-worlds theory is practically routine to me, and if you show me you’re a shape-shifter next, I guess I’ll just start to take notes, for a novel of my own.” 

“And that’s supposed to stop me mistrusting you?” Kathryn asks, eyebrow raised, but Marie’s eyes have widened and lost focus for some reason, and Kathryn doubts that she’s heard.

“Now wait a minute…” Marie breathes, then jumps out of her chair towards the book shelves. Within seconds, she’s back with a paperback in her hands, and Kathryn wonders why the frown of bemused concentration on Marie’s face as she thumbs through the pages, one leg tucked beneath her, glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose, suddenly seems so charming. Then that face comes up again, white and wide-eyed, and Kathryn tries for careful blankness on her own.

“You call faster-than-light speed ‘warp’, don’t you?” 

All thoughts of keeping her emotions out of her face vanish at that word. “How…?”

“You spoke of it in your dreams. Mister Paris, warp six, now, you said. And I’ve just remembered where I’ve heard that expression before. And where I’ve seen something else before.” She closes the book and passes it over to Kathryn, back cover turned up. And see Kathryn does. Two sets of eyes flick over to her combadge, then up, and meet, and Kathryn swallows dryly. Yes, the arrowhead has evolved somewhat, but it’s still recognizable, and the starburst in it on the book’s back looks exactly as she remembers it. 

When she opens the book and reads the summary on the first page, she doesn’t know whether to curse or to laugh, or both. The story of Captain John Kirk coming from the future to find whales to take back with him is a novel to Marie, but Jim Kirk’s Whale Probe Mission is history to Kathryn, history that has in fact spawned several academy courses she’s taken, from Klingon warp drive configuration to planetary defense mechanisms to temporal paradoxes and how to avoid them. Apparently this last one is a course Jim Kirk would have profited from – somehow, someone on this Earth has gotten wind of the mission and turned its events into this book. She turns it around in her hands to find information on the author, but it’s disappointingly vague. 

“He died a few years ago”, Marie volunteers. “Pen name of Robert Wesley, real name… oh, I don’t remember. Something Roddenberry, I think. He wrote several novels about Kirk and his crew. His ideas were great, but the books never really got off the ground – I guess because of his depicting gay characters. I mean, those were the eighties, right? I suppose he was lucky even to find a publisher. I came across them when searching for science fiction and homosexuality and read them, years ago.”

“Gay characters?” Completely frozen in disbelief, Kathryn manages nothing but these two words.

“Oh yes, the captain and his alien first officer”, Marie nods. “Some critics say he wanted to criticize the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of the armed forces then, trying to show that someone’s sexual preferences didn’t matter.”

Kathryn stops staring at Marie and drops her head to one hand again, instead. Her shoulders start to shake and in the blink of an eye she’s laughing, and hard. 

“I take it this is known to you?” Marie says, eyebrows lost in her hairline.

“Of course it is; well, Jim Kirk, not John, but still. He’s one of history’s heroes, monuments and all. And he’s reported to have been very much the ladies’ man, so to imagine him as gay…” with a last shake of her head, she meets Marie’s eyes. They’re bright, excited, amazed. 

“So you’re not shooting a movie from these books, are you? You _are_ from outer space!” 

“No, I’m from Indiana. I only work in outer space.”


	5. January 29th

I meet Ellen at the theatre where she works, and on our way to the train station we try to steer clear of the ever-growing crowds of Carnival participants. It’s two weeks to go, but the season is in full swing, especially so on the weekends. My friend looks pale, and tired, and that fits exactly to what she’s told me about her situation these last few days. I stop thinking of Kathryn or what she’s told me, or what she might be doing right now, because I need to be here, now, completely.

“So let me get this straight”, I try to make sense of what she’s told me in her last message, “he was the one who broke up with you?” We haven’t talked about the ‘how’, that first night. In fact, we hardly talked at all.

“Well, not exactly. We were just talking about us, again, as we’ve done a hundred times since that awful party”, and she looks at me and I manage a nod because boy, do I remember how angry at him I’d been for his rampant and aggressive flirting, “you know, me telling him that I don’t feel loved, that he doesn’t respect me, he telling me that he does, and that I won’t even do _this_ for him when he did _that_ for me… the usual. But the way he looked at me was different, and I couldn’t stop crying, and the pauses grew longer and longer, and we weren’t really getting anywhere. And then he looked up suddenly and said, ‘I don’t have to say the words, do I? You know it as well as I do’, and I cried even more”, and I don’t know how she manages not to cry right here and now, because I sure have tears in my eyes, “and that was it, really.” 

She shrugs, and the gesture is nothing as dismissive as she probably intended. It speaks of hurt, and loss, and makes me want to embrace her narrow shoulders, so that’s what I do. She clings to me for a heartbeat, then pushes me away as our train comes in. Her glance is apologetic, and I smile at her reassuringly, pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose in a gesture very familiar to both of us. It’s taken me a while, has taken both of us a while to get here, but here we are: Closer, more trustful with each other than we’ve ever been with our respective partners, intimate in a way that doesn’t have anything to do with sex but everything to do with being part of each other’s life for such a long time.

We find a place to sit on the train, and I slip in next to her, my presence a solid promise, as usual. We don’t need to talk right now, and the people around us certainly don’t need to hear, so we sit in silence for the duration of the ride, and I get a little lost in my thoughts. I’m gay, and she’s not. I knew as soon as I met her, knew she had a steady boyfriend about half an hour later, and still I fell for her dark brown hair and light grey eyes, her easy, full-throttle laughter – hell, I was nineteen, and out for adventure, in the big city for the first time. And I figured I might talk her around, someday, so I went about befriending her, easy when you work in the same place. And then her boyfriend of those days, Christoph, broke up with her, and instead of seeing this as a chance to step in, I saw her need for a true friend, and that’s what we have become, with patience (most of it on her part) and determination. We don’t share many interests (she’s a very... well, girly girl. I’m... not), but we do share a common sense of humor, and her set of values is more similar to mine than anyone else’s I know. And I guess when we met I was what she needed, and a few years later, she was what I needed, and now we’re just... close.

She’s not an orphan, but as close as can be; and when I comforted her about Christoph, who cheated on her for a year and still expected her to overlook that, and she told me about her parents in – at least I think that’s what it has been – an attempt to think of something different, my heart flew out to her and hasn’t returned. They live still, or rather her father does, but in the States somewhere, and Ellie, though she’s been there, has never told me exactly where ‘there’ has been, maybe out of fear that I’d track him down and shake him senseless. 

They fell in with a guru when Ellie was thirteen, at first right here in Cologne, then over ‘there’ two years later. They took her with them, but she managed to get away after nine months, with the help of a school friend and his family. She went to live with him, took counseling and got back on her feet while her mother died because treating cancer wasn’t something the guru condoned. Ellie finished school, even, and well enough to enroll at university, but the experience left her shattered, and in a way she always will be, I guess. Oh, she’s outgoing, and funny, and quick to make acquaintances, but she’s brittle when it comes to the deep feelings, to friendship, to love. To think that someone so small, so slender, so _raw_ , had come through all that only to be betrayed by the one she loved – it hurt then, and still hurts now, and Christoph should be glad forever that he never met me after he jilted her.

And now she’s been betrayed again. Not in the usual sense – I don’t think this one, Robert, has slept with someone else, for all his flirting and overly sensual ways. She’s never really trusted him, has known from the beginning (as I have, as all of her friends have) that he wasn’t someone to put one’s trust in. Still, in a pattern that was as transparent, even to her, as it was unavoidable, she grew used to him, grew dependent on him, soaked up the good things avidly, tried to ignore the bad that went with it. And now it’s over. Part of me wants to breathe ‘finally’, and I know part of her feels the same way, because she’s told me so, and yet, just as it was dependency then, it’s withdrawal now, pure and ugly, and a much larger part of me simply aches in sympathy.

But she’s not who she was the last time she was jilted, and heavens help me, right now, right here, in this rattling commuter’s train, as I compare the clearheaded if red-eyed woman next to me with the one who dissolved in tears in my arms years ago, the difference is unbelievable. I'm sure she’s hurting as much now as she was then, and yes, she’s relapsing at times, texting me that she’d take Robert back if he came to her, texting me that she wants to stay friends in order not to lose him, and I carefully refrain from making any judging comment on these impulses when I reply. But she also told me she feels better now, that the quality of pain is different, that it was the right decision to end this relationship even if it wasn’t hers, and these messages are clearer, and far more believable, and hopefully not because I want them to be. Yes, this is withdrawal, but I can see she’s up to it, and I rejoice over every ounce of her will, every step of her way, even the ones that take her back to where she’s been, because she’ll grow with them, too.

After getting off the train and walking for a bit until we’re clear of other commuters, her face grows dark and she sighs.

“My tinnitus is getting worse all the time. And don’t let’s get started on skin problems.”

“Fuck.” I offer softly, and she blows out a long breath. 

“Yeah. At least the migraine is gone.” We walk in silence for a while. Then, “God, I need to stop thinking.”

I grin at her. “Well, what’s it going to be, then? A rent movie and some booze?”

“Marie, I know you want to talk-“

“No I don’t.” I stop walking so she has to stop, too, and look at me. “Leelee.” My voice is soft on the nickname only I use. “Yes, I want to know. But this is not about me. This is about you, and if you want to stop thinking about this, then that’s what we’ll do. You know best what’s good for you.” Our eyes meet, and again, I’m struck by the strength in hers.

“Wine,” she replies after a pause, and we resume walking, arms linked. “I have some bottles left from New Year’s Eve. Faster than beer.”

“More maudlin, too”, I remind her.

“Prosecco, then. And a movie.”

“I’m paying.”

“Deal.”

* * *

The phone rings, and Kathryn is unsure what to do. On the days that Marie has worked from office instead of home, Kathryn has ignored the ringing. But it’s well after twenty-two hundred hours, and thus probably not work-related, otherwise whoever it is would call her mobile number. Kathryn is not quite sure whether she understands what Marie does, exactly, and what kind of shift rote the social worker is on, but she blames her ignorance on her concentration of how to get away from here, Q’s words be damned.

The phone’s display gives the number of the caller, and suddenly Kathryn recognizes it as Marie’s mobile. _She probably wants to talk to me_ , Kathryn decides after a second’s worth of being baffled, and picks up the phone as she’s seen Marie do, trying to determine which button to press. She opts for the green one and is rewarded by the sound of shouting voices and screaming tires blaring from the tiny speaker. Grimacing, Kathryn jerks the phone away from her ear, then gingerly brings it close enough to hear Marie's voice over the background din.

“Kathryn? ‘S that you? I’m sorry, hold on a second while I go somewhere else…” the sounds fade and Marie speaks up again, more quietly, but still too loud. “I’m sorry, but I completely lost track of time. I just wanted to make sure… ah…”

“It’s fine, really. You’re still with your friend?”

“Yeah, and we’re watching some movies and, ah… I thought I’d let you know.” Marie sounds more than a little tipsy, and Kathryn smirks. Marie has told her a little about Ellen’s predicament before she left to meet her, and getting drunk with a friend seems a universal way of dealing with a break-up through all times and ages. “I’ll be quiet as a tiny little mouse when I come back, I promise”, Marie cuts through Kathryn’s musings, resulting in another eye-rolling smile. 

“Fine, don’t worry. I’ll leave the door unlocked then, shall I?” And the fact that Marie has, a few days ago and just like that, given her the apartment’s second set of keys fits with Marie’s trusting ways, if not with Kathryn’s expectations. 

“Thanks, yeah. I… I don’t know when I’ll be home, but I’ll be quiet as a-“

“Yes, as a mouse. Alright.”

“Alright”, Marie sounds chastised for a moment, but jaunty again on her next words. “Bye then!”

“Take care.” As the line dies, Kathryn remembers that Marie usually presses a button to close a call, and decides that if the green one opened the line, the red one should probably close it. She puts the dead phone back with a sigh and buries thoughts of an uninterrupted night. 

When she comes in hours later, Marie is indeed quite silent, but still, Kathryn stirs when the thud of boots landing on the floor reaches the bedroom. Then there’s the unmistakable sound of the toilet lid coming up, and of someone being sick, and Kathryn groans softly and turns over on the bed. Her eyes fly open at the sharp crack and muffled oomph that comes next, though, and instinct takes her out of bed and over to the bathroom with no thought of knocking at all. 

Marie is on the floor, out cold, one hand still up on the toilet seat, glasses skittered over to a corner. Her eyes flutter already, though, so Kathryn kneels down next to her, eyes on Marie’s face. Another flutter, more prolonged this time, then awareness trickles back into Marie’s face, and a resigned little quirk settles around her mouth.

“Fainted”, she says thickly, and Kathryn nods. Marie closes her eyes, apparently fighting another heave. When the impulse passes, she blinks owlishly at Kathryn, and yet she doesn’t seem to be as inebriated as Kathryn would have suspected. “Happens every time”, she manages before pulling herself up to the porcelain again. Before Kathryn can ask exactly what happens exactly at which times, Marie’s shoulders go limp again, and her head connects with a thud, rolls to its side and drops downwards.

“Damn!” Kathryn grabs quickly and doesn’t care that it’s Marie’s hair she’s using to keep Marie's head out of the toilet. A shiver and a moan runs through the body Kathryn’s holding, then another heaving retch shakes some wakefulness into her charge, and for the next fifteen minutes Kathryn has her hands full and still can’t stop thinking, analyzing, theorizing. 

From the way Marie doesn’t panic at what’s happening, Kathryn deduces that ‘happens every time’ very probably means Marie faints every time she vomits, rather than that she vomits every time she’s drunk. And yet every time Marie shows signs of awareness, there’s naked fear in her eyes, and Kathryn can see her fight the heaves, fight to not black out again. Kathryn’s not sure, not sure at all that Marie knows that she, Kathryn, is even there, so after the next reiteration of vomiting and fainting Kathryn starts to speak to her, a constant stream of soothing, reassuring words and phrases. 

After two more retching spells, things seem to quiet down, but Marie doesn’t wake up this time. Instead, she suddenly starts to shiver violently, eyes rolled back into her head. Circulatory shock, Kathryn recognizes, and gets her into recovery position quickly. Then she grabs towels, the robe, everything she can reach from her position to wrap Marie in, but still, the tiled floor is cold, and Marie’s extremities colder still. So Kathryn ends up wrapping herself around the unconscious body, and thinks of cool hands fighting fever, and helpfulness returned, and not at all of how soft the skin on Marie’s neck feels on her cheek.

* * *

I wake slowly, sluggishly. The way I always do, after a puking spell. No one has ever been able to explain to me why this happens every time I’m sick, so no one has ever found a way to avert this. I hate it. I hate my helplessness with a vengeance, my dependency on sheer luck if no one’s around or on their unknown proficiency if someone is. 

I know I shouldn’t have drunk so much. I was dreading this, and I deliberately forwent the train to walk home, even though it took the better part of an hour. And yes, the uncommonly cold air did clear my head, but it didn’t settle my stomach, at least not enough. I still feel cold, now, but I’m used to that; after a faint I always feel cold, and there’s warmth in front of me and I burrow into it, and it tightens arms around me with a soothing noise, and suddenly, I realize that this must be Kathryn, and freeze.

Immediately, her arms loosen, and immediately, part of me regrets that, and immediately, part of me resents that regret, and their fighting wakes me enough to pull away a little. She does, too, and losing her warmth makes my knees come up, putting more space between us. When my tears come, I don’t fight them. They’re part of this, and I’ve come to think of them as a hormone outlet or something of that sort. They’re falling quietly while I explain all of this to Kathryn, and she nods in all the right places, and her eyes never leave my face, although most of the time my sight is too blurry to really see what she’s looking at. After a while I close my eyes because the look on her face is too… my brain refuses to categorize or interpret it, and I let go of the wish to, after a while.

“Will you be okay for a second while I get your jacket?” she asks, handing me a tissue to blow my nose. I nod while doing so, eager for warmth, eager and not eager to see her face disappear. I’m mortified, grateful, baffled, mortified, relieved, mortified. Completely. She must have seen something of this on my face when she returns, because rather than drape the jacket over me, she holds it out for me to take and wrap myself in it instead. A realization turns up in my head that we’re more alike than I’d thought we were. Takes one to know one, another treacherous thought follows, and I giggle. 

“Some alcohol left in my system, I guess”, I explain when Kathryn raises an eyebrow at my weak laughter.

“There’s nothing left in your system, I’d say”, she returns, and I giggle again. It’s easier than dwelling on my embarrassment. 

Still. “Sorry. And thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She shivers, once, and I push the robe off me and over to her. The towels she’s found barely cover my legs, but my jacket warms my upper body sufficiently, and sitting in a pyjama on tiles must be cold. She slips into it quickly, and throws me a grateful smile, leaning her back against the wall next to the toilet. Somehow, the warmth that spreads through me at seeing how delicately her wrists rest on her knees reassures me that I’m better. As if in echo to my thoughts, she asks, “Will you be alright?”

“Yes”, I sigh. “I’ll wait a while longer, and then I’ll get to bed somehow, and when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll be ravenously hungry. Which counts as alright, I guess.”

“Do you want me to help you get to bed?” 

Internal debate, instantly, between my knowledge of how totteringly weak I’ll be, and my unwillingness to take this any further than needed. “I’ll manage. Thank you.”

She nods, yet stays. Takes one to know one, I think again, and try to relax into her company, enough, at least, to close my eyes against the relentless neon light. 

“Something to drink?” she asks after several minutes, surprising me. I would have thought she’d dozed off by now, and I still wonder that she hasn’t gone back to bed after I refused her help. 

“King-size Caipirinha, please”, I murmur, just to hear her laugh, my eyes still screwed tightly shut.

“I thought you might like to get the taste out of your mouth”, she says, amusement resonating in her voice. 

“Hell, please, yes.” I start propping myself up on my elbows while she retrieves a glass from the kitchen and fills it under the tap. She regards my efforts for a while, and obviously judges me capable enough, because she doesn’t offer help again. Finding her eyes, I see solicitousness in them, though, and try for a smile which she returns. She must be a hell of a captain, I catch myself thinking.

I realize there’s no way I can swallow the first sip, and she immediately notices my discomfort and flicks her hand dismissively, even opens the toilet’s lid for me to spit. As I pull myself up, though, things start to spin a slow dance around my head, and I barely manage to get the water out before I have to lean against the porcelain, wanting, _needing_ some deep breaths, yet also shuddering from the memories, and the smell that lingers still. Wordlessly, she grasps my shoulders and helps me lean against the tub instead, and I roll my head back for a few long minutes. In through the nose, out through the mouth, and some sips in between; and when I almost lose my grip on the glass, she notices that, too, and takes it without a word.

At least my stomach doesn’t heave anymore. Tears come again, and again, I let them fall. I probably look a wreck, legs folded off haphazardly to one side, towels over me every which way, cold sweat on my neck, a face wasted by tears and, well, let’s face it, sick, and I don’t even want to think how my hair must look. Again, this makes me giggle, and that in turn gives me strength to raise my head off the tub and open my eyes. “Thank you.”

The look she returns is serious and light at the same time, and when the corners of her mouth quirk, I roll my eyes and laugh again, which sets her off in turn. Yes, this is easier than mortification.

“You know”, she says after this has passed, too, “I really want to get to know your friend.”

“Oh?” 

“If she can get you to drink even though you know this happens afterwards, she must be… impressive.” She passes me a washcloth, blessedly cool and damp.

I think of Ellie as I mop my face, and try to fit the word into my image of her. “Yes. Yes, she is.” Then another thought arrives, and I voice it. “But this doesn’t happen every time. And she didn’t make me drink.”

“Right”, Kathryn snorts. “As if drinking away lovesickness is something a true friend watches in sobriety.” Her smile pulls the fangs of this, and I’m too wrung out to get upset, anyway. She’s right, after all.


	6. February 3rd

“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

Kathryn and I are standing in front of the doors of a supermarket. Determined to give my eye muscles a break, I refrain from rolling, just tilt my head instead. She’s said this too many times to count, and we both know it's a good idea for her to get her mind on other things. 

“Oh come on, now. They won’t bite.” It’s my weekly dinner date, with Ellie and a few other friends, women all, and I already missed it last week on account of Kathryn's illness. I’m determined to go this time, and I’m determined she should come; it’ll do her good to get out. First we’ll shop, then we’ll cook, then we’ll eat, and then we’ll have ourselves a lazy evening of girl talk, or a movie, or whatever. Whatever Ellie decides, really, because by unspoken agreement we let her indulge her every impulse. She’s the one who set the time, she’s the one who’s called the menu, she’s the one who decided where we meet – not her apartment, but Julia’s, since that way (and all of us know that, and no one of us will mention it, because, hell, it’s perfectly alright) Ellie can just leave when she’s tired. We’re the ones who are early, Kathryn and I, because I rushed things a bit. I hate to be late, and wanted to allow a bit of time for public transport, and now here we are, with several minutes to spare.

She’s told me a lot over the last few days, and I’m still astounded she does, even if we have established she’s from another timeline by now, and I’m thrilled by these words, 'another timeline', as I’ve never been in my life. I almost choked when she asked me, cool as you please, how many World Wars there had been, but apparently my answer helped her figure that she would not ‘contaminate the timeline’ in telling me more, as long as I kept quiet. As I had come to my own conclusions about several things already, due to the Wesley books, she has, apparently, decided it wouldn’t harm to answer my questions. I don’t really know why she indulges my curiosity to this degree; maybe she just likes that I’m quick in grasping things. I do remember how fascinated I was by her tricorder, running it over things in my apartment, happy as a lark. She, for her part, was delighted when she found a way to tether her instruments to my smartphone and its GPS chip, and from that moment on I had to use my old mobile phone, and tried not to grumble.

“But what if I let slip something?”

“Well, don’t, then.” Oh, I have said all the appropriate things before. That it won’t happen. That she’ll be alright. That they’ll think they misunderstood, because of the language barrier – Ellie’s English is better than mine because… well, because of that time in the States, but Julia and Anna have already expressed their own doubts for tonight, and I have no idea how well Sarah will hold her own. But I hadn’t expected Kathryn to be so nervous, or rather, to be so vocal about it, to tell the truth, and to think I have several more minutes of what if’s to go is grating on my nerves. 

“Thanks.” 

“Oh, don’t mention it.” My grin is pretty merciless, and she snorts, but can’t help smiling, herself, even if it’s only a small one. “Tell me”, I go on, “how’s it on _Voyager_? Do you cook? Do you just have flavored jelly in tubes? Is there a space kitchen, and do you have gravity, at all?” She looks around a little guiltily, but the streets are quite empty. “Pills with nutrients? Come on, Cap-“ She tries to shush me with a look, and I grin at her again, but acquiesce.

“We have a kitchen and a communal mess hall, and yes, we do have gravity. But we also have replicators – energy-matter converters that can give you whatever pattern is in their databanks, at the touch of a button, or a spoken word. Access is rationed, though.”

“Wow. Energy-matter conversion. Just like that?” 

“Well… they can be a challenge, to tell you the truth. I know my replicator hates me. Its coffee is an insult, at best. At worst it’s a deliberate attempt at driving me insane.”

“Maybe it’s worked.” This wins me the darkest look yet, at least for tonight. “That’s why you like my cooking, isn’t it?” I suddenly realize.

“Partly, yes.” I raise my eyebrows. Eloquently, apparently. “I like your cooking for various reasons”, she elaborates. "Taste. Variety. Indulgence, too. Familiarity." I roll my eyes at her and grin happily. “Will you be cooking tonight?”

“Don’t push it, Kathryn”, and yet I’m still grinning, and she flashes me a quick grin of her own. They’ve been rare enough, and getting rarer still, with every day that passes, which is exactly why she’s here with me right now, in fact, even if we’re both stepping from one foot to the other against the cold. “It will be a collective effort”, I go on, “and you’re expected to do your bit, too, although I’m not sure whether I’ll let you near the knives. If you think a piece of machinery is trying to drive you mad, maybe we should keep sharp objects away from you. Who knows what you’ll think of them.”

She snorts again. “Is there an ounce of respect in you at all, Marie Vey?”

I contemplate this for a second, then shake my head with a hint of regret. “Nope.” 

She’s saved by the arrival of first Sarah, then Anna, both on bikes, and striking in all their differences. Sarah is tall, with shortly cropped dark hair, and warm, laughing brown eyes. Her clothing is eccentric, as usual, and black, as usual, and the ease with which she wears it is one of the things I like about her. Anna looks Scandinavian, somehow, with her clear features, pale blue eyes and fine blond hair. She’s about my height, yet far more slender, even after pregnancy and childbirth. Julia, marathon runner with the most enviable head of thick, long, copper hair, follows shortly afterwards, mobile phone pressed to her ear, and flaps her hands at us to go inside and start without her. She’s the shortest of us all, yet arguably the one with the most drive, too.

“…no, it’s alright, love, just come to my place when you’re…” I hear before the automatic doors shut her off.

“Ellie’s late, then?” I ask Anna, who shrugs. Sarah has already grabbed a cart and is making a beeline for the vegetable section while the rest of us saunter after her, Julia joining us after a short while. I’m the one they look to for directions on what to get, and the next fifteen minutes are somewhat akin to a flock of hens trying to build a car in a snowstorm. Kathryn hovers on the edges of the flurry, a smile around her lips, until Sarah, reliable, intrepid Sarah, a full head taller than Kathryn, hooks arms with her and takes her to the freezers to choose ice cream for dessert. I answer Kathryn’s imploring glance with an impish smile and cocked head, and turn to enlighten the rest of the girls on the merits of floury over waxy potatoes when making soup.

* * *

Kathryn hates to admit it to herself, and she would sooner bite off her tongue than tell anyone else, but she’s having fun. Marie’s bunch of friends is lively, and every one of them is every bit as irreverent as Marie, and they draw Kathryn in with cheerful banter and no heed of language barrier or alienation about her secrecy regarding what she does for a living. As Marie had suggested, Kathryn answers with the secret agent story when Ellen asks her while they’re both cutting up beans. Kathryn wouldn’t have believed it before meeting them, but after listening to how they tease and cajole, seeing them roll their eyes and hug and poke, the secret agent story, complemented by Marie with much mugging and wriggling of eyebrows, elicits laughter, not deeper questioning. 

Instead, she now knows about Sarah’s difficulties of finding a man who’s the right height for her 188 centimeters, of Julia’s difficulties of finding a man who’ll accept her academic career and doctorate, of Anna’s difficulties with her husband and baby, and about how fed up Ellen is with males of all sorts anyway at the moment. The rate at which the first two prosecco bottles empty is alarming, even though both Ellen and Marie mostly stay out of the game. Kathryn likes the beverage, though she stops after the one glass, and, like Marie, sticks to a fizzy mixture of apple juice and carbonated water for the rest of the evening.

Julia’s freshly baked bread, prepared well beforehand, is amazing, and the four different dips go with it very well. The vegetable soup comes out terrific, too, considering the number of cooks, and everyone attributes that to Marie’s taking command of the task. Kathryn’s dessert choice of walnut ice cream, runner-up when they couldn’t find pecan, is greeted enthusiastically, and the dessert toast goes to ‘comfort food and comfort friends’.

Kathryn can’t help but feel included in the circle of clinking glasses, included by the way all of them speak English as a matter of course, even amongst each other, even if they continually search for the right words. She joins in teasing Marie about her proficiency (and Kathryn is delighted that she’s heard her nicknamed ‘Smarty’; it will come in useful), and she’s amazed by the way all of them constantly reach out to draw her in. She’s been offered clothes, for heaven’s sake, just like that, well, after much teasing about how Marie’s jeans and blouse hang on her. Still, she barely managed to deflect Julia’s offer of opening her closet right there and then, and not two minutes after that, she had a standing invitation for something called a ‘shopping spree’ whenever she wanted, and much urging from Anna, Julia and Marie to take Sarah and Ellen up on it, complete with eloquent referrals to both women’s impeccable taste. It’s absolutely out of the question, of course, but still it feels good.

After dinner, Kathryn finds herself in the kitchen, helping Ellen with the dishes while the other ‘girls’ – and the fact that she’s started to call them ‘girls’, that she’s been invited to call them ‘girls’, in fact, sits warmly in her stomach – commandeer the living room and TV set. Apparently, they’re searching online for a picture or movie clip of some actress they all _swear_ looks like Kathryn.

“Look, I’m sorry for Marie’s state the other night”, Ellen begins, but Kathryn waves that away, mindful of the handful of cutlery she’s bringing over to the sink.

“Oh no, that’s quite alright. I know how breaking up feels, and drowning that feeling is one of a number of perfectly reasonable ways to deal with it, in my opinion.”

“I’m not sure Marie would agree, you know.” They share a quick smile. Kathryn can see the sorrow lurking in Ellen’s grey-blue eyes, much lighter than her own, but the same curious not-quite color. Slender, narrow-shouldered and pale, Ellen seems prone to be underestimated, and Kathryn would have, too, if Marie hadn’t commented on Ellen’s strength every time she’d received a message from her friend during the last few days. So Kathryn has looked for signs of that strength all evening, and found plenty, along with a quick intelligence and an observant sense of humor.

“She might”, Kathryn answers Ellen’s words. “Drowning it with a friend is better than drowning it alone.”

“But she’s a social worker. They don’t usually condone drug use in dealing with problematic situations.”

“I’ve noticed that her approach can be unorthodox at times”, and that comment gains Kathryn a raised eyebrow and a knowing smile from Ellen. “Oh, no”, she continues, picking up a tea-towel, “she hasn’t been at me. We just talked about her philosophies one night.”

“Don’t be so sure, now.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t be so sure she isn’t whittling away at you. She comes at you from unexpected angles, sometimes so blatantly obvious that you can’t believe she’s really serious, sometimes so quietly that you’d hardly notice. Of course, then she’ll blunder and let it slip, but somehow, that’s just part of her, and so goofy and endearing, too, you know?”

If she were talking to anyone else, Kathryn would be uncomfortable with this conversation – too personal, on too many levels – but you can’t argue with comfort friends after comfort food, and maybe that’s one result of whittling, right there.

“I told her once that I don’t feel very grown-up at times, for example, and she’s changed her behavior towards me after that, and I didn’t even notice, in the beginning”, Ellen goes on calmly, as if talking about nothing more momentous than the weather. “She used to mother me relentlessly, and didn’t give a hoot about the age difference. But now, she simply offers, and then trusts me to take her up on it if I need to, or decline if I don’t. And boy, is she good at guessing what to offer.” She smiles, at something down memory lane, and suddenly, something stabs Kathryn. Then Ellen turns that smile in her direction, and Kathryn quickly pushes her irritation to the back of her mind.

“I was dumbstruck when I realized how much she believed in me, how she believed me capable of making the right decisions for myself”, Ellen goes on, eyes losing focus again, hands idle on the sink’s edge for a moment. “It was such a heady feeling, knowing what she was doing each time she behaved like that, realizing that it worked, you know. For a while I felt as if I could walk on water. And you know what she did?” Kathryn shakes her head no, curious despite herself. “She thanked me. For allowing her to outgrow her mothering instincts. Thanked me!” Ellen shakes her head, too, and when her eyes meet Kathryn’s squarely, there’s a depth to them that Kathryn can’t really figure out. Then Ellen takes up the dishcloth again. “Christ, there are times when I feel as though this simple change in her has done more for me than years of therapy. I’ve never been self-confident, you know. My parents saw to that, and I thank them for it, still”, the words come out more resigned than bitter, “but her trust in me helps me find trust in myself, you know?”

Kathryn nods, unsure what to say. Basic command psychology, part of her thinks. Another shies at the mention of therapy and parents and the memory of her own experience of that, and at the look in Ellen’s eyes just now; and still another part marvels how two women so different from one another can form so close a friendship. Marie’s self-assurance is rock-solid, sometimes annoyingly so, and Ellen’s insecurity has been openly visible all night, good company or no. And yet, the fact that Ellen speaks so freely about all of this doesn’t seem to fit her lack of self-confidence somehow, and Kathryn still doesn’t know whether to feel uncomfortable about this or not when Sarah comes in and drapes her arms around both their necks, towering a full head over both of them.

“Ladies, we’re waiting for you to start the movie. Leave those dishes for Julia’s washer and join us, will you?” Sarah’s voice is whimsical and not a little tipsy, and Kathryn and Ellen share a grin.

“Give us two minutes, alright?” Ellen asks.

“Yes, ma’am”, Sarah replies jauntily before turning to leave, forcing Kathryn to hide a double take behind a smile. Then Kathryn comes back to something that has struck her, both as a more innocent topic and as something she’d like to know more about. “Age difference?”

“Of course. Marie’s the youngest of us by far, with her thirty-two years. I’ll be forty next year, Sarah has already crossed that line, and Anna and Julia are both thirty-seven.” Ellen looks at Kathryn curiously. “Why, what did you think?”

“I… didn’t think much about it, to tell you the truth.” Realizing how much closer to her own age these ‘girls’ are is something of a paradigm shift. All night, Kathryn has felt older than any of them, and not just by two, or even five years. _Am I really that jaded?_

“How old are you, then, if you don’t mind my asking?” 

“Forty-one.” Ellen whistles, then grins broadly, and Kathryn feels secure enough to give her a mock glare while she puts down the last dish. 

“Well. Nine years’ difference is not that bad, you know. You’ll manage.” With a pat on Kathryn’s shoulder, Ellen turns and leaves in the direction of the living room, leaving an open-mouthed Kathryn behind. Did she…? She couldn’t have, could she? Implied that Marie and Kathryn were… no. Or had she? Slowly drying her hands, Kathryn snorts softly and shakes her head. Marie has been nothing but… gallant towards her, very proper in that respect, for all her teasing on all fronts. More than proper, if Kathryn considers how physical the friendship between the other girls seems to be, the hugs, the touches to shoulders, the cheek-kissing. 

Kathryn never had a circle of women friends like this, so she really couldn’t say whether this was usual behavior or not. Sarah’s hanging on their necks just then, her linking arms with Kathryn in the supermarket, and all the other little touches Kathryn has seen and received, have been nice, friendly, even comforting after a bit of initial delicacy on Kathryn’s part, and there’s a lump in her throat when she realizes she hasn’t thought of _Voyager_ , of her crew, her family, all night.

* * *

A touch on my arm makes me take my eyes off Cary Grant defying a leopard with a chair. Ellie throws a meaningful glance in the direction of the kitchen, and I relinquish my spot on the sofa to her and go looking for my starship captain. She’s at the door to Julia’s small balcony, arms folded, and starts when I reach around her to open the door. We step outside, into a cloudless night, bracingly cold again, at least for Cologne standards, at almost ten sub-zero centigrade. 

“What do you see when you look up to the stars?” Kathryn suddenly asks. She doesn’t turn, arms still wound tightly around themselves. My arms yearn to hug her, but I most assuredly won’t, even if I’m certain she could need a hug right now. But she also looks like someone who doesn’t invite hugs. It seems to be a familiar pose, a look she’s perfected over the years.

I smile. I love the stars, some constellations more than others, and currently, my best-beloved one struts the sky in splendor. I refrain from pointing. She’ll know, won’t she? 

“Orion, with his sword and hounds, and Sirius. Taurus, with Aldebaran pursuing the Pleiades as usual. Venus, and another planet, probably Jupiter or Saturn; not red enough to be Mars.” I crane my neck. “The Big Dipper – I’ve always liked that designation. And the nine-thirty-two to Palma de Mallorca”, I finish, indicating a plane that’s just leaving from Konrad Adenauer Airport. It makes her snort, at least. “Really, I swear it is”, I protest, but give in to my own chuckle after a second. I’ve never claimed to be good at poker. “What do you see?” I ask her, trying to envision how her Earth’s sky would look.

“Less than what I’m used to”, she sighs. “No ships in orbit, no cities on Luna, no McKinley station, although I’m not sure if you’d see it from here. It’s just… I haven’t seen these constellations in a long, long time. And I always thought I’d see them…” her voice trails away like the condensation of her words. “This is home, and yet not home, and it feels strange, so strange, so… wrong.” Again, she pauses for a while, but I feel that there are more words waiting to be said, so I keep silent. 

“ _Voyager_ is thirty-thousand lightyears from home”, she suddenly blurts, a number that means nothing at all to me but obviously a lot to her. “We were stranded even further, twice as far, six and a half years ago. We’ve been making our way back ever since, and we’ve even made contact with Earth during the last months, letting them know we’re on our way, but we never…” her words have almost tumbled over one another in their rush to be said, but now she stops, chokes, breathes hard. I can barely follow her, but that she’s talking about this at all is more important than for me to understand her words, so I let her go on. “We were never meant to make this sort of trip, ship nor crew. We were never meant to take the risks we’ve taken, to go where we’ve gone. And we’re running so boldly, and proudly, and now I’m here, looking at Orion, and everyone’s still…” Maybe it’s the one glass of prosecco she’s had that has her open up like this, or plain old homesickness, or her palpable bad conscience. I marvel at her words, at the sheer pain in them, the pride, the longing, the affection. She’s still staring upwards, but I don’t think she sees anything. It gives me the opportunity to look at her, though, and that’s why I see her silent sigh and how she blinks her eyes, once, twice, three times. 

I plan to blame it on my own intake of alcohol tonight when I touch her elbow. I’m close enough behind her that she could lean back into me if she moved but an inch, and I plan to blame the cold if she did, but she keeps apart, erect, so tense she’s virtually crackling. I can see her jaws work, but when she turns to me, her eyes are dry. 

“You’ll find a way”, I tell her. “The parts will be in the mail on Monday at the latest, and then you can try that new setup.”

“Yes”, she breathes. With a last reassuring squeeze, I withdraw my hand, and we return inside, to screwball comedy and friends in the living room.


	7. February 8th

She’s pacing again. My word, but this woman has dramatic potential. Granted, I’d be frustrated, too, in her situation. It’s been fifteen days since she came here, twelve days since she told me where she’s really from, eleven days since she started re-programming my computer and mobile phone to connect to her combadge and tricorder, seven days since she’s started to take that rig-up and look for ‘readings’ up and down the streets near the bus stop where I found her, four days since she was forced to admit defeat on that front, too. My desk is a maze of improvised gadgetry and open catalogues, my living room carpet worn thin by her strides.

I know it’s no use to confront her about this. Fifteen days in close proximity to Kathryn Janeway (and when she finally told me her last name I had to laugh, because of one of the nicknames Ellie has for me: Mary-Jane, for the Spiderman journalist. With Vey being my last name, well… Of course, dear, frustrated Kathryn didn’t take well to my amusement) – fifteen days with Kathryn have taught me the futility of several things, and the necessity of others, composure and coffee reigning supreme among them. Privately, I’m glad that I have my training. Even if I didn’t have to constantly juggle her moods, Ellie’s heartache and my clients’ concerns, I probably would have tried to kill her several times over, combat training notwithstanding, were it not for my ability to look behind the curtain of her behavior or words. 

As it is, I’m watching both of them closely; Ellie isn’t spending a single evening alone, be it in my or another of the girls’ company, and we continually send each other messages. She’s recovering, even though her loneliness is palpable. But all things considered, I’m incredibly proud of how she’s taking this, not in stride, but with everything she has. Two weeks ago, after she’s told me about the breakup, I would have sworn she’d collapse, as she did when Christoph ditched her. I didn’t think she had it in her, with all she’s been through in her life, but now I’m beginning to realize that all she’s been through in her life has given her the strength I see in her now, and I’m cheering, _cheering_ for her braveness.

And on the other hand, Kathryn. Again, if you’d asked me two weeks ago, or make that ten days, even, I would have sworn she’d sail through all of this, starship captain that she is, but truth be told I think she’s close to breaking, and I realize I don’t really know much about what she’s been through at all. For all that she’s told me on Julia’s balcony, she’s been close with, well, I guess you’d call it ‘mission details’, and I can’t blame her, and certainly won’t ask. 

But take this pacing, now. Three strides up, sharp turn, three strides down, and my living room is far larger than that, so I wonder why she doesn’t pace the length of it, but I know better than to ask her that, as well. Sometimes she doesn’t turn instantly but stands there, fingers to her lips or on her waist, pondering something. I know her thoughts circle as aimlessly as her steps by now. In the beginning, she had a host of ideas on how to get back to her universe, or how to contact her crew. One by one, they failed. I couldn’t offer much except compassion, and the use of my apartment and, well, technology. Oh, and clothing. 

Although by now, Kathryn owns two pair of trousers, several shirts and assorted underwear that Sarah, Ellie and Julia went and bought with her, with Julia paying for all and dismissing Kathryn’s comments about lack of money out of hand. She earns the highest income of the five of us, by far, and you couldn’t visit her apartment and not know, but still, Kathryn had her difficulties accepting the gift, even if she does like what they found for her. I do, too. Between them, Sarah and Ellie have incredible fashion sense, and are responsible for most of my wardrobe, too, because I’m lousy at knowing what to wear, and they’ve found the most wonderful things for Kathryn; a creamy white, slightly cowl-necked shirt of something silky, for example, that I could spend happy and long hours watching her in.

I know she’s balking at the way I spend money, too, on things like a soldering iron (and when I caught her murmuring ‘flint knives’ I laughed out loud), a different wireless router and other assorted gadgets. But I have to, don’t I? She hasn’t got any money, nor anything to sell, and so we’re drawing on my savings, really, and I for one am alright with that. But it upsets her, and honestly I would think less of her if it didn’t. Still, her stubbornness can be exasperating. 

She misses her home, her ship, her crew, even though she hasn’t breathed another word about doing so. But she does, I can see it in her eyes. I’ve come to be pretty accurate with her facial expressions – I have to be, because when it comes to her emotions, to the things going on inside her, Swiss banks are beaches in comparison to Captain Kathryn (and sometimes I think she tolerates me calling her that only because I switch to Captain Coffee Bean otherwise, although she has taken to retaliate with Smarty when I do, not that it bothers me much). She doesn’t talk much, and she rarely wears her emotions on her sleeve, but I do observe her closely – in fact, I’m dividing my spare time between Ellie and Kathryn quite evenly, and really, I do the same things for both of them, listening, sharing what meager input I can give, applauding, commiserating. Sometimes one asks about how the other fares, but not very often, and I guess neither of them has much thought to spare on anything or anyone that doesn’t pertain directly to their current predicament, and I go along with that as long as it saves me from questions I wouldn’t know how to answer.

There’s a new quality to Kathryn’s stoniness today, and inwardly, I breathe a sigh of relief, because things are heading to a point, and I want to be there when her tension finally breaks. There’s a glint in her eyes that speaks of barely contained anger, and I survey the room, surreptitiously looking for breakables. Well. Dishes and glasses are safely behind doors; if she cracks hard enough to throw something, she’ll have to throw it hard enough to break those doors before she can do serious harm. Then again, I don’t think she’s the throwing kind. Rather the ‘set fire to it with a glare’ kind, I’d say. I’m trying to decide whether to leave her be or actually needle her to set her off because I find her attitude harder to bear every day, but then she takes it out of my hands.

“Goddamnit.” Her voice isn’t even raised, but fierce, oh so fierce. Her chin juts sharply forward, her mouth is a flat line, and her hands are clenched so hard I fear for her knuckles. 

“Go right ahead”, I offer pleasantly, and her eyes glare at me from across the room, but I fail to burst into flames, and they soften again. Then she drops them, and I give another inward sigh; she needs to vent, or things will turn critical. So, with tight control on the corners of my mouth, I say the only thing that’s certain to set her off. “Do you want to t-“

“No, I do _not_ want to talk about it, Marie! If I wanted to talk about it, I would! So will you, for pity’s sake, stop asking!”

“You do not want to talk about it. I get it.” But I don’t drop my gaze; I keep it calm and inviting. I know it will irk her; I do it precisely because it will irk her. Sure enough, she resumes pacing, this time complete with gesticulating. 

“I’m sitting here like a… like a…”

“A lame duck? A lump of dough? The Empress of China?” Again, my face offers nothing but helpfulness, and surely doesn’t deserve the dirty look it receives.

“There must be something I’m not seeing, something I haven’t thought of, something I can _do_ , for heaven’s sake!”

Mutely but pointedly, I let my eyes wander across the roomful of failed experiments. Her eyes narrow minutely and her mouth flattens even more, into a thin, sharp line, and that’s a definite deterioration of what I had, up until now, filed away as DEFCON 2 in my lexicon of Janeway Facial Expressions. Oh, I’d feel the same – control, to me, is everything. I have to be in charge of things, and so does she. And she isn’t. It’s out of her hands, literally, and I can see the thought choking her. She inhales deeply, then pauses, and when her shoulders slump and she turns away and exhales silently, I cross the room, step around her, stop about an inch from her personal space. I won’t let it end like this. She’s not finished yet.

“What about your crew then?” I remind her. Immediately, the fire is back in her eyes. Oh yes. It’s easier to be protective than hurt, isn’t it, Kathryn?

“What about them?” she snarls.

“Well, they aren’t here, are they? I thought they would have found a way to rescue you, by now.” And so does she, and that’s what’s smarting. They’re more than crew, to her. I’ve seen that plainly in her eyes when she talks about them, the little that she does divulge to me. I’m voicing it back to her now, in the hope that she’ll decide what to do with that anger.

“They’re working on it!” 

“How do you know?” I fire back instantly. “You haven’t heard a single word from them, your… instruments haven’t picked up anything – they are not here, Kathryn!” My last words are whiplashes, every single one of them. I’ve carefully gauged their harshness, though, and it seems I got it right when her mouth quavers once, then sets again in that flat line.

“I. Just. Know. They are doing what they can.” There’s steel in her voice, and a promise of danger, but that has never daunted me coming from anybody, and it’s not stopping me coming from her.

“They won’t leave you behind, is that what you’re saying? After more than two weeks? Are you quite certain? It does sound a bit too… romantic, somehow, for professionals.” 

The corners of her mouth drop, her nostrils and eyes widen minutely, and I’m sure I can see her shaking, even. Not far to go, now.

“They wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t.” Her words are clipped and precise, and that, too, is a warning signal I’ve become accustomed to. Defcon 3, my lexicon tells me. “Maybe something’s hindering them in some way. Maybe time moves differently over there, and it hasn’t been two weeks, for them-”

“That’s clutching at straws, Kathryn, and you know it.” I can do clipped, too.

“Damnit, Marie, what do you want to hear? That I’m stranded? That I’m stuck? That I won’t leave here until my dying day?”

“Now you’re dramatizing.” I can even do deprecating.

“Like hell I am! Do you have any idea what this feels like?” She’s waving her arm about, gesturing in the direction of her gadgets. “To see every single idea I’ve had turn to nothing? To get my hopes up again and again, only to have failure laugh in my face?”

“So you admit it, then?”

“Admit what!” Apparently, she can do whiplash, too. And now I lean into her personal space, now I touch my finger to her shoulder, now my eyes bore into hers, slow and banked fire to her icy fury.

“You’ve failed. You are helpless, Kathryn. You’re out of the race. You”, and I poke her, “have lost”, and again, “control.” And her mouth opens instantly, but then she freezes, and after a breathless second, and to my surprise, she laughs, and her whole body language changes. She laughs like one who’s seeing the joke, and accepts it’s on her. 

“Marie, you’re right. Of course you are. And if this whole situation is pointless, futile, ridiculous beyond belief, at least it’s really brought that home.” She looks up suddenly as if expecting something to happen, but nothing does, and I fail to see what it could be, anyway. A neighbor, come a-knocking because of our shouts? They do their own shouting often enough, and we haven’t even been that loud. I incline my head slightly, and the movement brings her eyes back to me.

“Well now.” Change own body language and insert just the right amount of light teasing into voice; this confrontation is over, for all intents and purposes, even if not in the way I anticipated. She doesn’t need to expressly say it; we both are aware of what she as good as said. Her acceptance, faster than expected, is better than a shouting match, at least. She knows, and I know, and she can accept that I know. I drop my shoulders, my finger in the bargain, and lightly cross my arms after pushing up, once again, my glasses. She mirrors my stance, appraising me as if she’d never seen me before.

“You know, you’re really something.” 

I raise my eyebrows at her for that, ironic twist around my mouth. “I’m not sure how to take that, you know.”

“You did that on purpose! You had the _nerve_ …” her face is a very delectable mixture of amusement and indignation, and I can guess at the reason. I take another step forwards now, on my own errand this time. The timing couldn’t be more perfect, and I intend to make the most of it.

“I do have nerve, indeed, Kathryn.” I wouldn’t have done this twelve years ago, but then again, I’m no longer who I was twelve years ago. Indignation turns to disbelief at my continued pushing, and there’s a hint of wildness in her eyes as she realizes she has no idea of the direction of my advance this time. She hasn’t completely found her footing again, and I know I’m taking advantage, but sometimes, that’s what you have to do.

“You might get away with bossing your crew around”, I go on, “but I have, in me, enough mischief and disrespect to lead seven mutinies if need be, to reach my goal.” And still, my eyes hold her, their fire now emitting a different kind of heat altogether. 

“What…” she clears her throat because her voice doesn’t quite obey her, “what goal would that be?” 

Ah-ha. The corner of my mouth comes up, and I treat her to a smile. A slow one, languid one. A dangerous one. A scoundrel’s one. Approval of the way she held her own just now fans the fire in my eyes, and I let her see the flares. She swallows, and my fire gains a sparkle from that, too, and as I see realization finally, finally beginning to dawn in her eyes, I cross that last gap between us and kiss her. 

I’m surprised that no sparks fly, to be honest. I’m surprised that there isn’t more heat on either pair of lips, but – patience. Her eyes widen, startled, and I can see them perfectly well, because I certainly won’t close mine right now. I give her my all – a sweet, slow caress of her lips, another adventurous smile as I withdraw for a breath, the tiniest touch of one of my fingers on her jaw, a look filled with everything that I won’t, can’t put into words right now. 

I’ve never felt so powerful and helpless at the same time, and it’s intoxicating. To realize that I’ve got her completely in my thrall; and it’s tantalizing how she can’t stop staring at me, how her eyes roam my face, my eyes, my lips, my eyes again, my nose stud for some reason, my eyes. To realize that, nevertheless, I’m naked, bare to a refusal, to every cutting remark she might make. So when she makes the move that brings her lips to mine, in a kiss that more than makes up for the lack of heat I’ve been lamenting earlier, it blows me away.

It would be polite to say we’re gasping when we break apart, but, truth be told, we’re panting. There’s a hunger in her eyes that mirrors what I feel, and I don’t give a care in the world whether she has been with women or men before. All that matters is that for this one moment, she’s given up on trying to analyze, prioritize, execute. I do my best to keep her that way, never ceasing to stoke the fire, my hands taking over when my lips need to rest and vice versa. 

We’re fumbling, and we both accept, no – shrug off our awkwardness, far more intent on the sheer intensity of what we’re doing. Her pants are scrunched up around her knees while she writhes and bucks into my hands. God, her _sounds_. Hardly audible, yet, just like her face, so expressive. I’m so close to the brink, myself, that her small, low, urgent groan at climax very nearly suffices to bring me over, and I’m not even out of my shirt. Her body seeks mine seconds later, greedy to reciprocate, and when she touches me, inexperienced and determined and ferocious, I let go without the slightest hesitation. 

The second time around, she takes a more scientific approach, experimenting with comprehensive variants of input, comparing occurring output on both available test objects, and extrapolating from her results. Her purposefulness goes hand in hand with a playfulness that’s completely unexpected and all the more enchanting for it. I lose more than myself in climax this time, and I know it.

* * *

Kathryn looks at herself in the bathroom mirror and wonders. Wonders who’s staring back at her, wonders what has happened tonight. Wonders if this is what Q intended, and if so, why he hasn’t shown up yet; there were numerous occasions when his unbelievable talent for bad timing would have made it practically imperative for him to appear.

This has been, _is_ , sex, and very much so, but is it just sex? There has never been any further mention of the fact that Marie was gay after that first night when she let it slip, and why should there have been, it was of no consequence. Yes, there had been that comment of Ellen’s, and some teasing during dinner, but that had been jesting, without any grounding in fact. Or had there been? Kathryn remembers some of the glances Marie sent her way, some of her own reactions to Marie, and how she’s dismissed them, until now. Until Marie’s kiss has woken something that Kathryn has willed to lie dormant, again and again, and so thoroughly it’s become second nature. Until the younger woman’s (and even though Kathryn has known for days now that it’s by almost ten years, all of a sudden this knowledge means something new, although she’s not sure what) knowledgeable attentions have invited Kathryn to this dance.

She’s feeling giddy, Kathryn suddenly realizes, and blames it on hormones running riot. She’s never thought of herself as someone who’d tumble into bed with someone else just like that, be they male or female – and to realize how she’s underestimated the utter attraction of a female body, this female body, so strong and hungry and unashamed, has been breathtaking, and exploring the possibilities even more so – but this isn’t a case of ‘just like that’, is it. Marie, brash, thoughtful, goofy Marie of the laughing eyes, has been around her almost constantly for over two weeks; two weeks of unexpected company for both of them, and suddenly Kathryn realizes how readily Marie has adapted to Kathryn’s presence. How good-naturedly she’s put up with Kathryn’s mounting frustration and outbursts, ignoring them, teasing Kathryn about them, with only a warning glance every now and then to tell Kathryn to back off and calm down.

Kathryn knows her own temper. She had her dealings with counselors before, and it’s only now she realizes how Marie’s training must have helped keep things not only civil, but actually productive between the two of them. She’s grateful for that, and more grateful still for the way Marie has helped her vent just now, and keep her face in the process. Kathryn never had a liking for counseling, but this – this is something she might be able to accept. She resolves to address the way Marie has manipulated her, but she does concede it was artfully done. Both times. 

Remembering the second time, that kiss, and her reaction to it, wakes a grin so silly Kathryn laughs at herself. Oh, definitely hormones. But probably the death blow to any form of counseling relationship, as well, and Kathryn isn’t remotely sorry about that, for some reason.

* * *

I’m humming to myself as I prepare sandwiches for myself and Kathryn. Kathryn. I know I probably don’t say her name the way it’s supposed to be said, more so since she’s told me in the doctor’s office that there’s a Y in there. I know my accent is rotten, for all my huge vocabulary, but that’s what happens if your abilities are honed by books and movies, rather than living and talking. Kathryn. I like her name. Like what my tongue does, pronouncing it, pressed up behind my incisors for the ‘th’, then fluttering on the rather more Italian than English ‘r’ I can’t help but use when my tongue is up there. Like what my tongue did, minutes ago. I laugh out loud, and that changes to a grin when I realize how happy I feel. When my eyes fall on the kitchen counter’s clock, I whistle, and my grin widens. I don’t know when I’ve last been up at twenty past two in the morning. The small hours, I’ve heard this time of night being called, and I like that expression; there’s nothing like it in German. The small hours, and the reason I’m still awake.

Kathryn.

Kathryn, with her stubborn hair and her wonderfully vulnerable clavicles. Kathryn, a light dusting of freckles all over her, and I’m willing to discover every last one of them. Kathryn, with such delicate feet, and a body toned by years of exercise and with just the right amount of softness. Kathryn, with the most delectable pair of breasts I ever had the pleasure of pleasuring, and oh, I loved how she loved how I loved them. 

The first time was pure rush, something completely disconnected from thought. I can’t forget her face, its intense immersion quite familiar, its heedless abandon something I’ve never seen before. That first time, she’s given herself to me completely, has let my hands and lips and tongue have their way with her, and I’m just beginning to realize what a gift this must have been, from her. What came after has been no less amazing, but much more… rational, in a way, much more conscious, even in the throes of passion, or whatever they call that condition. 

When she smiled, that night we met, over coffee; smiled that wry little smile of hers I’ve seen quite a few times since, I guess I was done for already then. Yes, I fall in love quickly, but at least I’m conscious enough of my emotions to know it, and tonight definitely has sealed the spell. I’ve fallen for Kathryn, Captain Janeway of _Voyager_ of another universe. I’ve fallen, and hard, and I know I shouldn’t have. I have no idea whether she feels the same way too, and for all I know she could be gone tomorrow. On the other hand, who am I to reject what is quite obviously fate, and certainly very, very enjoyable?

Balancing the plate of sandwiches with a flourish, I have to consciously keep from skipping on my way back to the bedroom. I am no longer a teenager, although my brain and glands disagree at the moment. Kathryn’s already back and under the sheets, and she’s found us some candles. They’re giving off a much nicer light than the ceiling fixture, but they’re a completely unexpected move on her part – I hadn’t chalked her up as the romantic type. I put the plate on the bedside table and flop down next to her unceremoniously; I’ve never been graceful, exactly, and though I might wish it were different, especially at a time like this, I can’t change it.

“You know, they say you shouldn’t eat after six p.m.”, I say, waving my sandwich about and jeopardizing the tomato slices, “but I disagree. I think the best food is that which you eat between two and four in the morning.”

“Oh?” she asks, her own sandwich hovering in front of her mouth. “Why’s that?”

“Because of what it signifies.” My grin is shamelessly full of mischief, and when she catches my meaning, she rolls her eyes, but can’t suppress a chuckle. 

In the morning, I put the spare bed away.


End file.
